Learn About Worldwide Terrorism

Someone forwarded me a link to the Terrorism Knowledge Base, an excellent Web site "sponsored by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing terrorism or mitigating its effects." This comprehensive data bank provides information about domestic and international terrorist groups and incidents worldwide, covering the years 1968 to present (with the caveat that data for 1968-1997 covers only international and not domestic incidents).

The site provides several analytical tools with which to plot out statistics—in the form of pie charts or bar graphs—such as numbers of incidents, injuries, deaths and groups. At your fingertips is a comprehensive database of incident reports, terrorist group comparisons and legal reports. To start with, I would recommend checking out the two-minute tour on the home page.

I used the Incident Analysis Wizard to pull up a 3D bar graph showing all recorded terrorist incidents by year. The numbers don't surprise. There is a huge spike starting in 1999 (we can thank the second intifada and the Chechen situation, among other things).

While this may be a rather depressing/distressing topic, I plan to spend some more time learning about what's going on in the way of radicalism worldwide. Knowledge is power, sort of. Well, maybe it's just morbid curiosity.