So far this month, rebel violence has left at least 54 people dead. So far this year, at least 1,200 have died. But in the past ten years of violence, deaths have generally averaged over 10,000 a year. While the level of violence has declined in the last two years (because of amnesties and growing disillusion with Islamic radicalism among the population), there is still a hard core of several thousand Islamic radicals that refuse to surrender or stop their attacks on civilians.