SINGAPORE — For the fourth consecutive year, the number of lives claimed by terrorists shrank in 2018, a new report has found. There were 15,952 deaths last year, which is less than half the 33,555 killed in 2014 when the threat of terrorism was at its peak.

The findings correspond with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group’s decline. It now has an estimated 18,000 fighters left in Iraq and Syria, down from more than 70,000 in 2014.

However, despite the fall in total deaths, the reach of terrorist groups has widened. Last year, 71 countries recorded at least one terrorism-related death, making it the second-worst year on that metric in the past 20 years, with 2016 being the worst year.

The Global Terrorism Index 2019 report was published on Wednesday (Nov 20) by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a Sydney-headquartered think tank.

The report also highlighted worrying trends of a surge in far-right political terrorism and increased female participation in terrorism between 2013 and 2018.

During that period, far-right attacks in North America, Western Europe and Oceania increased by four-fold, and the trend has continued into this year, with 77 deaths attributed to far-right terrorists as of September.

Across the globe, the number of suicide attacks perpetrated by female suicide bombers jumped by 450 per cent, although suicide attacks by male perpetuators fell 47 per cent over the same period.

Last year, terrorism had a diminished impact on the global economy — 38 per cent less than the impact on 2017. The global cost of terrorism stood last year at US$33 billion (S$45 billion).

Afghanistan overtook Iraq to become the country most impacted by terrorism in terms of the number of deaths last year. It lost 7,379 individuals to terrorism last year, almost 60 per cent more than the number in 2017.

This also meant that the Taliban overtook ISIL as the world’s deadliest terrorist group last year, with the number of deaths it claimed rising more than 70 per cent to 6,103, while deaths attributed to ISIL fell globally by almost 70 per cent from 4,350 in 2017 to 1,328 last year.

WHAT ABOUT ASIA?

The situation in the Asia Pacific improved, with 11 out of 19 countries including Malaysia scoring better on the Global Terrorism Index, which counts the number of terrorist incidents, terrorist-caused fatalities and injuries, and the cost of property damage.

Papua New Guinea recorded the largest improvement last year, closely followed by China, Laos, Japan and Myanmar.

Singapore again scored zero alongside Timor-Leste, North Korea, Cambodia and Mongolia, which did not experience any active terror threats last year.

However, the terror situation in four places — namely Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam and South Korea — deteriorated slightly last year. Among the four, the largest increase in deaths from terrorism was seen in Indonesia, where there were 39 more deaths than in 2017. This made it the country with the sixth-highest increase in deaths globally.

PHILIPPINES, THAILAND MOST AFFECTED IN REGION

Still, the Philppines remained the country most affected by terrorism in Asia Pacific. It has lost 3,000 lives to terrorism since 2002 — almost half of the nearly 7,000 deaths the region suffered in the same period.

With 297 dead, 343 injured and 424 incidents recorded last year, the South-east Asian country ranks ninth in the report’s list of countries most impacted by terrorism, coming after India and Yemen and before Congo.

Its deadliest incident was a suicide bombing on a military checkpoint that killed at least 10 soldiers and civilians and wounded six individuals. ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack, while authorities attributed it to the Abu Sayyaf group, which is an affiliate of ISIL.

Over the whole year, the Abu Sayyaf group was responsible for at least 21 terrorist attacks, but it was only the Philippines' third deadliest group.

Terrorist activity in the Philippines was dominated by the communist New People’s Army, which was responsible for more than 36 per cent of deaths and 39 per cent of terror-related incidents.

The group, which is now most active in the provinces of Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental, was responsible for engaging in an insurgency against the Philippine government for five decades, causing 2,387 deaths since 1970.

The second deadliest group there was the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement, a separatist organisation based in the southern Philippines. The group’s attacks increased by 115 per cent between 2017 and 2018, driven by an uptake in violence in Maguindanao, which experienced a 343 per cent increase in terrorist incidents.

The report pointed out that the Philippine government’s response to the terrorist threat was hampered by limited coordination, lack of capacity and geographical challenges, as it noted that terror groups were most active on the southern island of Mindanao.

The country that was the second most-affected by terrorism in the region was Thailand, which accounts for another 1,900 deaths, the majority of which occurred in the decade between 2006 and 2016.

Both the number of attacks and deaths it experienced fell in the last two years, but the country still suffered 135 incidents last year, of which 25 resulted in 39 deaths.

Thailand’s terror threat largely stemmed from unknown or loosely categorised groups, such as those who were referred to as “anti-government extremists”. Attacks were most commonly carried out using firearms.