The United States government has listed Pakistan among nations that provide “safe haven” to terrorist groups. In its ‘Country Reports on Terrorism’ for 2016, the US State Department claimed that groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed continued to hold rallies, raise money, recruit and train people in Pakistan.
The report said that India continued to experience attacks, “including by Maoist insurgents and Pakistan-based terrorists”, in 2016. It also acknowledged that India blamed Pakistan for terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir.
The State Department report further claimed that the Pakistani military conducted operations against groups that conducted attacks within the country, such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. But it accused Islamabad of not taking “substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or Haqqani [Network]”.
Even though it claimed that the country did not put in enough efforts to “substantially limit their ability to threaten US interests in Afghanistan”, it admitted that “Pakistan supported efforts to bring both groups into an Afghan-led peace process”.
An overview to the report on South and Central Asia said that Afghanistan “continued to experience aggressive and coordinated attacks by the Afghan Taliban, including the affiliated Haqqani Network and other insurgent and terrorist groups”. “A number of these attacks were planned and launched from safe havens in Pakistan,” the US report claimed.
India among countries most affected by terrorism, says US
A senior US counter-terrorism official said that 55% of the terrorist attacks in the world in 2016 took place in five countries, including India and Pakistan.
“Although terrorist attacks took place in 104 countries in 2016, they were heavily concentrated geographically, as they have been for the past several years,” said Acting Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism Justin Siberell. “Fifty-five percent of all attacks took place in Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and the Philippines.”
He made the statement at a media briefing after the report was released.
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