Country Reports on Terrorism is an annual report published by the United States Department of State. In 2005 it replaced the Patterns of Global Terrorism report, which had been released since 1985.
The report is published in accordance with Title 22, Section 2656(f) of the United States Code, which requires the Secretary of State to submit to Congress an annual report on terrorism.
History
When the Patterns of Global Terrorism report for 2003 was released in April 2004, many errors were noted within it. The report did not list all the attacks considered to be terrorism that year, including major bombings in Istanbul and Iraq, and the statistics on terrorism were lower than outsiders thought they should have been.
In response to this criticism, the State Department released a revised report in June 2004, correcting most of the errors; however, this was not enough to stop some critics from saying the State Department had deliberately left out information showing failures in the War on Terror.
When it came time to release the PoGT for 2004 in April 2005, the State Department announced it was getting rid of that report and replacing it with the Country Reports on Terrorism. The official reason was that the old method of gathering data was outdated and the new report featured a better collection of information.
Summary
The Country Reports on Terrorism does not provide any statistics on terrorism like its predecessor. It simply has several chapters dealing with a country and any progress it has made in fighting the War on Terrorism.
However, a separate report released by the National Counterterrorism Center gave a chronology of "significant terrorist events," something not featured in the Country Reports. That report said there were 651 "significant" attacks in 2004, which left 1,907 people killed and around 8,000 wounded. These figures were the highest in 21 years of compiled data on terrorism.
The National Counterterrorism Center Country Reports on Terrorism 2005 included a Statistical Annex, according to which there were 11,111 terrorist attacks in 2005 of which 3,474 occurred in Iraq and 489 occurred in Afghanistan.
≈≈Yearly Reports summarized≈≈
Country Reports on Terrorism 2004
This is a summary of the report produced by the Secretary of State for Congress. In 2004, the fight against terrorism continues; the struggle is full of success and failures. Both the terrorist and those that fight against them have had losses. Many countries have been attacked by terrorists on their home soil; the United States has been fortunate in that area. The United States has only lost citizens in other countries while fighting for the war on terrorism; those lost were fighting in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Gaza. The majority of the lives lost were of the other nationality and of the Islamic faith. The counties that were hit the hardest were Russia, Spain, and The Philippines. While other countries have been attacked in the last year, these counties had the largest casualty of those injured or killed.
Al-Qaida is weaker of the late because the United States and allies around the world the globe have been working on eliminating major players in al-Qaida's leadership. Some of those that were killed Khalid Ali Al-Hajj, Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, and Amjad Farooqui. There have been deaths and capture terrorist by governments around the world including Pakistani, Filipino, British, and many other places. The men captured were the ones in charge of communication for al-Qaida, and the plan to attack assets of the United States and allies. These countries efforts have resulted in the capture or death of terrorists, some local terrorist groups while others were part of al-Qaida. While quite a few leaders are eliminated, there are still many leaders that have not been caught that are planning more attacks against the United States and allies.