Terrorism Deaths Decreased in 2017, Says U.S.

A report by the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism says that last year the number of deaths and attacks attributed to terrorism was considerably lower.

“The total number of terrorist attacks worldwide in 2017 decreased by 23% compared to a year before that,” said Nathan Sales, the Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism, on Wednesday. “The total deaths due to terrorist attacks decreased by 27%,” Sales added.

He asserted that was the result of significantly “fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq,” where ISIS has been eliminated from a large portion of the country’s territory thanks to a U.S.-led military coalition, CNN reports.

Still, U.S. officials warned of the danger that ISIS makes a comeback in the region regardless of the coalition’s battlefield successes. Terror groups, in general, have also become more “dispersed and clandestine” and “less susceptible to conventional military action,” the department’s report further warns.

Sales further noted that most terrorist attacks in 2017 happened in a relatively small number of nations, although the number of countries who experienced terrorism last year was about 100. “Fifty-nine percent of all attacks took place in five countries. Those are Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Pakistan and the Philippines,” he stressed. Sales added that “70% of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria.”

The report again singled out Iran as the main state sponsor of terrorism. Sales pointed out that Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah has been linked to attacks and weapons stockpiles in Europe and South America.

According to the report, Pakistan didn’t do enough in 2017 to curb terrorism as Islamabad “did not restrict the Afghan Taliban” and other affiliated terrorist groups like the Haqqani network “from operating in Pakistan-based safe havens and threatening U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.”

The country’s government also didn’t limit terrorist groups Lashkar e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which continue to raise money, recruit and train in Pakistan.