Bangladesh ranked 39th among 158 countries in the first-ever Global Terrorism Index (GTI)! Well, it’s a good news for us since we were not badly targeted, and 
Bangladesh was the least terrorism-affected among the South Asian countries.

But the report produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) and published on Tuesday, seems to say something fishy as it mentioned that there were only “six attacks” of such kind and a total of “three people” were killed and four injured in those incidents since 2001, said the GTI-2011.

So far I can recall, there had been some gruesome attacks that claimed around hundred lives during this time which have not been reflected in the index, namely the August 24, 2004 grenade attack, Ramna Batamul attack and Udichi bomb attack. May be the IEP has considered these incidents as results of internal political conflict (!).

The GTI ranks 158 countries over the past 10 years and says that during this time terrorist attacks worldwide have quadrupled. Only 31 of them have not experienced a terrorist attack since 2001.

The index was prepared based on data from the Global Terrorism Database, which is collected and 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.

Iraq ranks number one on the list. Pakistan ranks second on the list, followed by Afghanistan. India stands fourth and Yemen ranks fifth. Somalia, Nigeria, Thailand, Russia and the Philippines appear in the fifth to 10th positions respectively.

North America is the least likely region to suffer from terrorism, with a fatality rate 19 times lower than that in Western Europe. The US has had the largest improvement on the GTI score from 2002-2011, falling from the first to 41st on the list.

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.

The number of fatalities dropped to 7,473 in 2011, indicating a 25 percent fall from that reported in 2007.

The IEP has also urged the policymakers to redefine tackling terrorism strategies based on the findings.