How the west mishandles terrorism (and makes it worse)

In the rich world, terrorism is one of the least significant of all threats to life and security. But our panicked over-reaction and rushed, repressive laws do what the terrorists could not achieve by themselves.

2025 was Australia’s worst year for terrorism. The 14 December attack on a Jewish Hanukkah festival on Bondi Beach ended in the deaths of 16 people, including one of the two gunmen. Another 41, including the second alleged gunman, were injured.

Until then, the nation’s 40-year total of terrorism-related deaths stood at 22. Before 2009, terrorist incidents were typically attacks on consulates and embassies, as well as one on an abortion clinic. Since 2009, terrorism has been mostly inspired by radical Islamist ideology. That included the Bondi Beach shooting, which was allegedly perpetrated by lone-wolf followers of Islamic State.

An unknown number of planned attacks have been thwarted by police and security agencies. According to a recent government review of anti-terror arrangements, five major plots were disrupted between 2001 and 2014, with 28 people charged.

All significant terrorist incidents result in massive and alarmist media coverage. Politicians, chasing short-term advantage. compete with each other over who has the toughest response. After almost every significant incident, new laws are passed which inevitably restrict freedoms. Some of these new laws may have been of use; most have not.

The fixation on terrorism tends to distract from other serious dangers. But there are no political brownie-points in talking about lighting strikes, which kill between five and ten people in Australia every year and injure more than 100. Between 1803 and 1991, at least 650 people were killed by lightning.

In 1996, Martin Bryant shot 35 people dead and injured 23 others at the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania. But because there was no political or ideological motive, this wasn’t counted as terrorism.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in the first 25 years of the current century, 35,844 people died on Australian roads. Around 40 times that many were seriously injured.

Between 2015 and 2024, 32,264 died by suicide.

Over the same period, alcohol was the underlying cause of 19,115 deaths.

And so on.

What is terrorism anyway?

Nobody quite knows what terrorism, precisely, is. There have been many attempts to create a legal definition that is widely accepted internationally, but all have failed. Most democracies, though, have their own terrorism acts which include definitions fairly similar to Australia’s. In 2006 a report by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security gave this summation:

“Terrorism in Commonwealth law is defined as an act or threat that is intended to:

• advance a political, ideological or religious cause; and
• coerce or intimidate an Australian or foreign government or the public (or section of the public), including foreign public.

The conduct falls within the definition if it:

• causes serious physical harm to a person or serious damage to property;
• causes death or endangers a persons life;
• creates a serious risk to the health and safety of the public (or section of the public), or
• seriously interferes, disrupts or destroys an electronic information, telecommunications or financial system; or an electronic system used for the delivery of essential government services, used for or by an essential public utility, or transport system.

It’s legalistic and very wordy, but there’s a lot it leaves out. Because governments have a generally accepted monopoly on violence, nothing a government does within its own borders can be classified as terrorism. This leads to some anomalies: if a political group commits widespread violence, that’s terrorism. But if that group succeeds in its aims and becomes the government – and goes right on killing – that’s no longer terrorism.

Legal definitions can work in democratic, relatively peaceful western countries, where the population is unified against violent attackers. But that’s not where most terrorism takes place. In places which experience frequent and large-scale incidents – much of the Middle East, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, it depends which side you’re on. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.

Where the killing fields are (and aren’t)

In almost all of the 194 countries for which we have data, -- and in all of the western democracies -- the chances of being killed or injured in a terrorist attack are vanishingly small. As we’ve seen, you’re much more likely to be struck by lightning. And in the 40 years from 1981 to 2021, 17 of those 194 countries had no terrorism deaths at all.

The United States, with 3,754 deaths, is number 25 on the list. But 84% of those deaths occurred in only two incidents: the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 (2,977) and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 (168).

Population also needs to be considered. If all of those 3,754 terrorism deaths occurred in a single year, it would involve 0.001% of the population, or 1 in 100,000. In comparison, gun violence in 2024 alone took 44,450 lives. And over the 40-year period, the gun death toll was 1,406,334.

The impact of terrorism is felt most in the poorest countries of the world, not the richest. The chaos which followed the ill-starred US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 produced terror across the region, which has since been exported world-wide. Those two countries alone accounted for 153,794 fatalities. That figure does not include the numbers killed by the invading forces or by nominal governments.

Those wars created the Islamic State, perhaps the most pernicious terrorist organisation of modern times. At its height in 2014, IS held about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq before being pushed back. But it expanded its activities to many other countries, often using lone-wolf followers radicalised by radical preachers and IS’ own online media. This was the case with the December 2025 shootings at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

Tracing the time at which terror attacks occurred shows the extent of the trouble. The increase in the Middle East after about 2005 coincides with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and, after 2011, the rise of IS. Increases in South Asia (particularly in Myanmar) had their own causes.

Those wars created the Islamic State, perhaps the most pernicious terrorist organisation of modern times. At its height in 2014, IS held about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq before being pushed back. But it expanded its activities to many other countries, often using lone-wolf followers radicalised by radical preachers and IS’ own online media. This was the case with the December 2025 shootings at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

Tracing the time at which terror attacks occurred shows the extent of the trouble. The increase in the Middle East after about 2005 coincides with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and, after 2011, the rise of IS. Increases in South Asia (particularly in Myanmar) had their own causes.

The Global Terrorism Index, produced by the independent Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace, wrote in its 2025 release that IS, despite being degraded from its peak in the Middle East, remained the greatest exporter of terror.

“Islamic State (IS) and its affiliates remained the deadliest terrorist organisation in 2024, “ the researchers wrote, “responsible for 1,805 deaths across 22 countries. The four major terrorist organisations, IS, Jamaat Nusrat Al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and al-Shabaab continued to increase their activity, with deaths attributed to these groups increasing by 11% 4,204. In 2023, these groups were active in 29 countries which increased to 30 countries in 2024”

The epicentre of terror killings, by IS and other groups, is in the vast Sahel, a poor semi-desert stretch of land spanning the African continent from west to east just south of the Sahara. The nations most affected are Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and northern Nigeria.

“Terrorism in the Sahel has increased significantly,” reported the Global Terrorism Index, “with deaths rising nearly tenfold since 2019. In 2024, the Sahel accounted for 51 per cent of all terrorism deaths, while overall conflict deaths in the region exceeded 25,000 for the first time since the inception of the Index. Of these, 3,885 were attributed to terrorism. Terrorism deaths here are now ten times higher than in 2019.”

Data for western countries shows a profoundly different level of threat. In places like the Sahel and Somalia, terror attacks are perpetrated by large, well-organised large groups with the capacity to produce sophisticated propaganda and recruitment material, using social media and artificial intelligence, including deep-fakes. They are often more innovative than those trying to combat them.

In the west, those large support mechanisms do not exist. Recruits are self- identified and self-radicalised by accessing online material, though local preachers have a clear role in justifying violent acts. This limits the threat but can also make it much harder for security services to disrupt.

None of this is to say terrorists are not a significant threat, or that the issue should not be taken seriously. But context is needed.

“In the West, lone actor terrorism is on the rise with terrorist attacks increasing from 32 to 52 in 2024,” the Terrorism Index reported.

“These attacks are typically carried out by youths, often in their teens, who have no formal ties to terrorist organisations. Instead, they become radicalised through online content, constructing personal ideologies that often blend conflicting viewpoints influenced via access to fringe forums, gaming environments, encrypted messaging apps and the dark web. Because there are no affiliations, it means these types of attacks are difficult for intelligence agencies to track. Social media algorithms also accentuate biases, pushing disaffected youth towards more radicalised content. In Europe, one in five persons arrested for terrorism is legally classified as a child.”

Who are these people?

Finding out what motivates terrorists is made more difficult by the fact that relatively few survive the incident. A European research group tried to overcome this by studying the manifestos left by suicide bombers and others who had died while carrying out their mission. At the centre of those motivations, they found, was the desire to matter. That’s common to most of us, but, taken to extremes, can lead to extreme events.

“When the desire to matter remains high, but the conventional ways of mattering are not available or do not satisfy the need,” the researchers concluded, “a person may find other means to feel significant …

“The motivational profile of a lone offender is distinct from that of the average person … What differentiated extremists from non-extremists were the lower importance of close ties with others, achievement according to societal standards, and pleasure and excitement in life (stimulation and, to a lesser degree, hedonism).

Borum ... 'no terrorist profile'

A study by Randy Borum, director of the Psychology of Terrorism Initiative at the University of South Florida, concurred. “Terrorist ideologies tend to provide a set of beliefs that justify and mandate certain behaviours,” he wrote. “Those beliefs are regarded as absolute, and the behaviours are seen as serving a meaningful
cause …

“There is no ‘terrorist personality’, nor is there any accurate profile – psychologically or otherwise – of the terrorist.”

“People become terrorists in different ways, in different roles, and for different reasons. It may be helpful to distinguish between reasons for joining, remaining in, and leaving terrorist organizations.  Perceived injustice, need for identity and need for belonging are common vulnerabilities among potential terrorists.

“Mental illness is not a critical factor in explaining terrorist behaviour. Also, most terrorists are not psychopaths.”

None of this helps much in ether understanding those who want to kill other people and spread terror, nor in identifying them before they attack. Preventing terrorism is extraordinarily difficult and can be expected, sometimes, to fail.  Each of those failures risks enormous loss and social disruption – as we saw with the Bondi shootings.

Are we doing their job for them?

Each terror attack in a western country produces a level of media coverage, public outrage and political overreaction that not only serves to limit our own freedoms but which amplifies the sense of fear and dread in the community. In doing this, we inadvertently magnify the attackers’ purposes.

“The violence [of terrorism] is aimed at creating fear in the targeted population and often provokes prompt and violent response from the state,” wrote Professor Frederic Lemieux, a security specialist at Georgetown University.

 “Acts of terrorism followed by violent crackdowns can become a cycle that is difficult to disrupt.”

The most obvious example is the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq under President George W Bush, following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. America and its allies (including Britain and Australia) lost that war after generating a massive rise in terrorism across the Middle East and eventually across the globe. The wars led directly to the rise of Islamic State, the inhumanly brutal terror organisation that inspired, among much else, the Bondi shootings.

The same pattern can be seen in the ritual of rushed, politically-motivated and flawed legislation which follows almost every incident in every western nation. Before the 9/11 attacks, Australia had no specific anti-terror laws; by 2021, federal and state parliaments had  had enacted 92 of them, comprising over 5,000 pages of legislation. In the aftermath of Bondi, there has now been another wave.

“No other nation can match the volume of Australia’s counter-terrorism laws. Their sheer scope is staggering,” wrote constitutional law experts Associate Professors Rebecca Ananian-Welsh and Keiran Hardy.

“But have they made us safer?”

“Undoubtedly, some counter-terrorism laws have enhanced Australia’s national security. But others have little, or no, proven effectiveness, despite their impact on fundamental rights. For example, in 2012, former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Bret Walker SC, found control orders were not effective, not appropriate and not necessary …

“Australia’s counter-terrorism laws enable and entrench high levels of secrecy. It is a crime to mention basic details about the use of many counter-terrorism powers — or even the mere fact they were used.”

Laws originally intended solely against terrorism have been used in normal policing. This migration of authoritarian powers has gone largely unchecked and poorly understood.

In the Melbourne University Law Review, Ananian-Welsh and the eminent constitutional lawyer George Williams documented the process.

“This is enabling processes of ‘normalisation’ by which such measures come to be treated as unexceptional, rather than as extreme measures that ought to be strictly limited in their application,” they wrote.

“In this form, they are more readily adapted to other areas of the legal system. Outside of the anti-terror context, the now-normalised measures can give rise to even more extreme laws that further challenge fundamental values. In this sense the legal responses to the war on terror can continue indefinitely outside of the anti-terror context and have a permanent impact on constitutional values.”

The Australian Human Rights Commission has repeatedly pointed out the mismatch between terror laws and basic obligations to human rights and the rule of law, to which the nation is committed under international treaties.

The terrorists could not have expected such a resoundingly favourable – to them – outcome. What they failed to do, we, in our haste, have accomplished for them.