MEASURING AND UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF TERRORISM

LONE WOLF TERRORISM
IN THE WEST
The majority of terrorist attacks in the West are not carried out by well-organised
international groups. Instead, the terrorist threat in the West largely comes from lone
wolf terrorism. Lone wolf terrorists are individuals or a small number of individuals
who commit an attack in support of a group, movement, or ideology without material
assistance or orders from such group. 14 For example, the Boston bombings would be a
lone wolf attack as the two brothers committed the attacks without any outside
support. These types of attacks account for 70 per cent of all deaths in the West from
2006 to 2014.
FIGURE 26
DEATHS FROM LONE WOLF ATTACKS IN
WESTERN COUNTRIES, 2006–2014
Seventy per cent of deaths from terrorism in
Western countries were from lone wolf attacks.
70
Other attacks
Source: IEP Lone Wolf Database, START GTD
164
Lone wolf attacks
IEP coded 100 instances of lone wolf terrorism in the West from
2006 to 2014, which resulted in 164 deaths and 491 injuries. This
accounts for 70 per cent of deaths and 46 per cent of injuries
from terrorism over this time period.
There is not a strong relationship between the number of lone
wolf attacks in a country and the number of deaths that
country has from terrorism. The United States had the most
lone wolf attacks with 42 and the second highest number of
deaths at 52. In contrast, the United Kingdom had the second
highest number of lone wolf attacks at 20 with two deaths.
Norway had the most deaths but only three attacks. This
discrepancy highlights that lone wolf terrorism encompasses a
wide range of actors with differing motivations, aims and
targets. As such, few patterns can be determined about the
state of terrorism in a particular country just by assessing lone
wolf terrorist attacks. What the data does show is that some
countries have much higher levels of lone wolf terrorism than
others. The data also demonstrates that lone wolf attacks in
Western countries are not exclusively inspired by the calls for
international jihad by al-Qa’ida and ISIL.
From 2006 to 2014 the three largest lone wolf attacks in the
West occurred in three different countries. One individual was
responsible for all 77 deaths in Norway with two attacks on the
same day in 2011 that killed 77 and injured 75 people. The second
largest lone wolf attack occurred in the United States when a
soldier killed 13 people at a military base in Texas in 2009. Like
Norway, the Netherlands also had one attacker commit all
terrorist deaths. This occurred in 2009 when an individual drove
his car into a crowd to try and damage the bus carrying the
Dutch royal family killing seven and injuring 12 people. None of
these attacks were inspired by al-Qa’ida or ISIL, but all would be
classed as acts of home-grown terrorism.
GLOBAL TERRORISM INDEX 2015 | Terrorism in Western Countries
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