Rise in global terror since Iraq war

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Attacks by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks have increased significantly since the invasion of Iraq, according to a new study.

The study's authors data shows a sevenfolkd increase in the global yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks.

"Even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third," the Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, authors of the study.

The co-authors are research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law. Bergen is also a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, a public policy institute.

The study demonstrates "what we all knew intuitively to be true: that the Iraq war has radicalized a new generation and created a lot more jihadist terrorism," Bergen said at an event at the New America Foundation on Wednesday.

Bergen and Cruickshank analyzed data from the MIPT-RAND Terrorism database, a source that closely has tracked global terrorism since 1998. They found that there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of fatal attacks worldwide since the war in Iraq began.

The study also examined whether there was a rise in attacks on Western targets since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The numbers Bergen and Cruickshank assessed indicated that indeed there was an increase in number of fatal attacks on Western interests and citizens, as well as a rise in the fatality rate in these attacks.

The Bush administration intended for the Iraq war to draw Jihadist terrorists to Iraq "like moths to a fan, (to) perish there rather than wreak havoc elsewhere in the world," the report said. It said the administration assumed that the Iraq war would reduce the number of Jihadist terrorists worldwide and that the U.S. interests would be safer after the war, but data indicated neither of the assumptions proved to be true.