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With Osama bin Laden now out of the picture, many analysts are noting that the threat posed by the core al-Qaeda group he headed had already receded significantly, even as a loose coalition of some 33 regional AQ affiliates and other unaffiliated terror groups have become more active. While that certainly seems to be the case, it obscures the fact that al-Qaeda can claim the highest percentage of fatalities of any terrorist group in recent memory, and with that the dubious title of ‘Most Deadly.’

This morning, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) published a helpful statistical and visual analysis of AQ’s record in the decade from 1998 to 2008, focusing on bin Laden’s core group – what it calls al-Qaeda Central – but not including its regional affiliates like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or al-Qaeda in Iraq.

START’s main point is that, even if AQ Central is in its twilight, it was responsible for more casualties than any of the other 600-plus terrorist groups operating in the 98-08 period – at least 4,299 deaths and 6,300 woundings during a spate of 84 attacks. (See image at right [Note: spelling differences are due to multiple Arabic transliteration systems]. Data courtesy of the Global Terrorism Database.)

Fatality data from other large terrorist groups, by comparison, are smaller: ETA (Spain) caused 820 deaths from 1972-2008 and the IRA (Northern Ireland) has caused 1,829 deaths from 1970 to the present. Only FARC (Colombia) caused more deaths at 4,835, but that was spread over a 30-year period.

That means that while AQ was responsible for less than 1% of the 20,204 terrorist attacks that took place during the decade from 1998, it caused a full 21% of the fatalities.

AQ Central eclipsed other terror groups, START notes, due to its focus on inflicting mass casualties. But where exactly has that strategy gotten the global jihadist movement? Recently, AQ and its ilk have been caught off guard by the wave of popular uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa, supposedly its regions of core support, in which peaceful protest rather than violent jihad has been the preferred choice of millions of citizens in seeking the overthrow of corrupt and inbred regimes that have outstayed their welcome.

In other words, ‘Most Deadly’ no longer necessarily equates with ‘Most Successful.’

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