Country Reports on Terrorism

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 The official reason was that the old method of gathering data was outdated and the new report featured a better collection of information.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 the Statistical Annex, there were 11,111 terrorist attacks in 2005 of which 3,474 occurred in Iraq and 489 occurred in Afghanistan.