Bangladesh least affected by terrorism in South Asia
Says Institute for Economics and Peace report
Bangladesh has been ranked as the least terrorism-affected nation among the South Asian countries, according to a report of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) which was published on Tuesday.
Overall, Bangladesh ranked 39 among 158 countries in the first ever Global Terrorism Index (GTI).
In Bangladesh, since 2001 there were six terrorist attacks and a total of three people were killed and four were injured in those attacks, the report said.
Iraq ranked number one on the list despite a considerable fall in the number of terrorist incidents in the country after the war ended in 2007. Pakistan ranked second on the list followed by Afghanistan.
India was fourth and Yemen ranked fifth. Somalia, Nigeria, Thailand, Russia and the Philippines took positions fifth to 10th respectively.
The index looked into 158 countries over the last 10 year period during which terrorist attacks worldwide have quadrupled. Only 31 countries had not experienced a terrorist attack since 2001.
North America is the least likely region to suffer from terrorism while the US has had the largest improvement on the GTI score as it fell from first position in 2002 to 41st in 2011.
The index is based on data from the Global Terrorism Database, which was collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), headquartered at University of Maryland, USA.
The indicators include the number of terrorist incidents, fatalities, injuries and property damage. The GTI analysed many other factors and found intergroup cohesion, human rights, group grievances, corruption and governance to be associated with terrorism.
The study observed that terrorist attacks had risen steadily in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 to 2007, and peaked between 2005 and 2007, coinciding with the Iraq War.
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