The United States has said terrorist attacks and total deaths increased in Bangladesh in 2015 though Bangladesh has articulated a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards terrorism and remained committed to counterterrorism cooperation.
In 2015, Bangladesh experienced an increase in terrorist attacks against religious minorities and
government installations and for the first time, ‘transnational groups’ have claimed responsibility for these attacks, said the US in its ‘Country Reports on Terrorism 2015’.
The report released on Thursday also named several countries, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, where terrorist attacks and total deaths increased in 2015.
More than 55 percent of all attacks took place in five countries- Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria. And 74 percent of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place in five countries-Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, and Pakistan. Bangladesh experienced a significant increase in terrorist attacks and violent extremist activity in 2015 compared to 2014, the report said.
The government of Bangladesh has attributed these attacks to the ‘political opposition and local terrorists’. Transnational groups such as ISIL and AQ in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) have claimed several attacks targeting foreigners, religious minorities, police, secular bloggers, and publishers, the report read. According to the statistical annex prepared by the University of Maryland and appended to the report, the total number of terrorist attacks in 2015 decreased by 13 percent when compared to 2014, according to a message received here from the US Department of State on Friday.
Total fatalities, due to terrorist attacks, decreased by 14 percent, principally as a result of fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan and Nigeria, said acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism Justin Siberell at a special briefing in Washington, DC. This represents the first decline in total terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities worldwide since 2012, he said. The US Department of State released the Country Reports on Terrorism, which described the counterterrorism landscape during the last calendar year and fulfilled an important congressional mandate.
The report allowed the US to regularly assess our effectiveness and make informed assessments about policies and priorities and where to place resources. Although terrorist attacks took place in 92 countries in 2015, they were heavily concentrated geographically, as they have been for the last – past several years.
