This is the seventh edition of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI). The report provides a comprehensive summary of the key global trends and patterns in terrorism over the last 50 years, covering the period from the beginning of 1970 to the end of 2018, and placing a special emphasis on trends since 2014, which corresponds with the start of the fall of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Peace (IEP) using data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and other sources. Data for the GTD is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland.

The GTD contains over 170,000 terrorist incidents for the period 1970 to 2017. Deaths from terrorism fell for the fourth consecutive year, after peaking in 2014. The decline in deaths corresponds with the military successes against ISIL and Boko Haram, with the total number of deaths falling by 15.2 per cent between 2017 and 2018 to 15,952. The largest fall occurred in Iraq, which recorded 3,217 fewer deaths from terrorism in 2018, a 75 per cent decrease from the prior year. For the first time since 2003, Iraq is no longer the country most impacted by terrorism.

A note on pastoral violence in the Sahel.
Herders have been driving their cattle across the Sahel region of Africa for centuries and the Fulani reportedly make up 90 per cent of these herders. The Fulani are an ethnic group numbering in the order of 20 million and are found in several West and Central African countries, especially Nigeria. Many of them are nomadic or semi-nomadic herders.
Traditionally, the relationship between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers throughout the region has been relatively violence free, if at times contentious. Herders migrate seasonally to graze their livestock, and in return for grazing rights, fertilise farmland. However more recently, tensions and violence have increasingly flared between herders and farmers with some estimates suggesting that in Nigeria alone up to 60,000 people have been killed in clashes since 2001.

In Nigeria, this conflict is driven by the increases in population that have contributed to
resource scarcity and desertification. Ambiguous land laws and a weak rule of law, especially in rural areas, have also played a part. Tensions between the Fulani, the majority of whom are Muslim, and farmers, of whom the majority in Nigeria for example are Christian, is largely driven by economic causes and low levels of Positive Peace.

However, extremist Islamic groups such as the Front de Libération du Macina (FLM) in Mali have, and may continue to, build from these underlying grievances and recruit susceptible members of the Fulani ethnic group through the use of ethno-religious narratives. The FLM, which formed in 2015, has similar stated goals and methods to al Qa’-ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

The FLM was responsible for approximately 12 per cent of terror attacks in Mali in 2015 and 2016. These attacks were responsible for ten per cent of deaths from terrorism in Mali during these two years. Of particular concern is the increasing terror threat from radicalised Fulani in Nigeria, where there is already an ongoing violent conflict between herders and farmers. The ongoing conflict over land use in Nigeria has been exacerbated by worsening droughts, erratic rainfall and land degradation. This has contributed to thousands of deaths in recent years, resulting in a strong government response. Events in the GTD attributed to ‘Fulani Extremists’ reflect the use of terrorism as a tactic in the conflict between pastoralists and farmers, rather than the existence of an organized terrorist group.