India among top terror-afflicted nations: Report

The US Department of State's annual Country Reports on Terrorism for 2008, released on Thursday has said that India ranked among the world's most terrorism-afflicted countries, but said India's counterterrorism efforts remained hampered by its outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems.

The report said that the "already terrorism plagued, South and Central Asia experienced more tragedy in 2008 as terrorists expanded their operations and networks across the region and beyond".

"The impact of the region's terrorist problem on the United States and its citizens grew more severe as dozens of US citizens were attacked, kidnapped, or killed by violent extremists," it said.

The report said that in response, while Washington worked to increase counterterrorism cooperation with its partners in South Asia, "continuing political unrest in the region, weak governments, and competing factions within various South Asia governments, combined with increased terrorist activities, resulted in limited progress and made South Asia even less safe for US citizens and interests than it was in 2007."

As expected, it listed the horrific Mumbai terror attacks on 26/11 as among the most high profile and immensely destructive acts of terrorism of the hundreds of terrorist attacks conducted throughout South Asia,  along with the July 7 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan and the September 20 bombing of the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad.

The report in listing India among the world's most terrorism-afflicted countries, said "it was the focus of numerous attacks from both externally-based terrorist organizations and internally-based separatist or terrorist entities."

"Although clearly committed to combating violent extremism, the Indian government's counterterrorism efforts remained hampered by its outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems," it said.

In noting that 26/11 was perhaps one of the most spectacular attacks of terrorism since 9/11, the report said that while the "terrorists appeared to have been well-trained and took advantage of technology, such as Global Positioning System trackers," the local and state police in India "proved to be poorly trained and equipped, and lacked central control to coordinate effective response."

The document, which is prepared by the State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, said, "none of the perpetrators of these attack," as well as those involved in some of the other major terrorist attacks in India "have yet been prosecuted."

The report acknowledged that some state governments in India "have expressed interest in augmenting their security forces by either creating or buttressing state-level assets, or hosting central level unites to address the increased terrorist threat."

It pointed to the Chattisgarh government having invested in counterinsurgency training for police and paramilitary forces at its Jungle Warfare Training Center.

Nevertheless, the report said, "There is no clear unified command structure between state and federal forces in counterinsurgency efforts, which hampers their effectiveness."