State Department report calls Pakistan a terrorist haven.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The latest “Country Reports on Terrorism” – an annual report put out by the US State Department that summarizes terrorist activities in various countries around the world – has singled out Pakistan as being the main source of grief for terrorist activities in India in 2013.
The report, released this week, says that India “remained severely affected by and vulnerable to terrorism, including from Pakistan-based groups and their affiliates as well as left-wing violent extremists.” It also blamed Pakistan and Afghanistan for acting as safe havens for al Qaeda and other fundamentalist groups plaguing south Asia and the Middle East.
In particular, the report singles out the Tehri-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Haqqani Network (HQN) groups, both of which operate largely within India’s next-door neighbor, for perpetrating some of the deadliest acts of terrorism the region saw last year. The State Department alleges that these groups have tied themselves to al Qaeda to help carry out these attacks.
“These alliances continued to provide the group with additional resources and capabilities,” says the report. “Terrorists in South Asia carried out operations in heavily populated areas and continued to target regional governmental representatives and U.S. persons. On numerous occasions, civilians throughout South Asia were wounded or killed in terrorist events.”
The State Department report also says that another main source of Pakistan’s antagonism towards India stems from transgressions on the Line of Control (LoC).
“Indian sources continued to attribute violence and deaths in Jammu and Kashmir to trans-national terrorist groups that India alleges are backed by Pakistan,” it says. “Continued allegations of violations of the Line of Control between India and Pakistan (the border along Jammu and Kashmir), Pakistan’s failure to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks to justice, and activities of Pakistan-based terrorist groups remained serious concerns for the Indian government.”
The report indicated that India’s Government has been working with the international community and partners in the south/central Asian region to “undertake efforts to coordinate its counter-terrorism capabilities more effectively,” saying that “cooperation and coordination” are critical to eliminating the threat of terrorism.
Specifically, the US and India conducted their second Homeland Security Dialogue in Washington, DC last May, while India hosted its Homeland Security Dialogue Police Chiefs Conference in December. Indian officials also participated in the State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) program, and conducted exchanges of information with the FBI via its Embassy’s Office of the Legal Attaché.
Despite these efforts, however, the report cites at least six terrorist attacks on Indian soil last year in Silsukhnagar (Feb. 21), Bangalore (April 17), Chhattisgarh (May 25), Bodh Gaya (July 7), Jammu and Kashmir (September 26), and Patna (Oct. 27).
According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), which is cited by the report, some 400 people were killed in India last year as a result of terrorism, a slight increase over 2012’s numbers. About half those deaths were attributed to the Communist Party of India and Maoist/Naxalite violence, which “the Indian government considers its most serious internal security threat.”