Published: 12:19 AM, 26 August 2026
The Indian Narrative Again: What the IEP and ASMT Reports Mean for Bangladesh
Zubair Hasan
The Sydney-based international research organization, the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), released its annual Global Terrorism Index, or GTI 2026, on last March 19. The report shows an improvement in Bangladesh’s position in the global terrorism index. It also shows that Bangladesh is less affected by terrorism than India.
The IEP’s index covers 163 countries around the world. It measures how much a country is affected by terrorism. The lower the score, the lower the impact of terrorism in that country.
Each country is given a score from zero to 10. Zero means there is no impact of terrorism.
And 10 means the highest level of impact from terrorism. In other words, the lower a country’s score, the lower the impact of terrorism in that country. Similarly, the lower a country is placed in the ranking, the lower the impact of terrorism. In other words, the country ranked number 1 is the country most affected by terrorism, while the country ranked number 163 is the least affected.
Various terrorism-related data are considered when determining this score. These include the number of attacks, the number of people killed and injured, and hostage-taking incidents. Based on such information, the overall impact of terrorism during a specific period is measured.
The latest IEP report shows that Bangladesh is in a much better position than India and Pakistan in terms of the impact of terrorism. Bangladesh ranks 42nd in the global list. Its score is 2.286. Based on this score, the impact of terrorism in Bangladesh is at a “low” level.
On the other hand, India ranks 13th. Its score is 6.428. This means that the impact of terrorism on India is much higher than in Bangladesh.
The situation in Pakistan is even more worrying. With a score of 8.574, the country has risen to first place as the country most affected by terrorism in the world.
In other words, according to the GTI, the impact of terrorism in Bangladesh is significantly lower than in India and Pakistan. In particular, the number of terrorist attacks in Bangladesh fell by 100 percent in 2025 compared with the previous year.
In Bangladesh, no terrorist attack was recorded in 2025, which led to a significant improvement in the country’s position. As a result, Bangladesh has emerged as one of the relatively safer countries in South Asia in terms of the impact of terrorism.
On the other hand, India’s situation is somewhat different. According to IEP data, terrorist attacks in India fell by 43 percent during the same period. But Although such number of attacks has fallen, the impact of terrorism in the country is still relatively high.
The conflict in Kashmir and the activities of various armed groups are affecting India’s security situation.
In addition, the activities of Maoist-Naxalite extremist groups active in several states in eastern and central India are also a major security challenge. At the same time, ongoing ethnic and communal conflicts in different parts of the country are making the situation more complicated.
These conflicts and violence are putting pressure on India’s overall internal security.
The situation in Pakistan is the most worrying. In 2025, 1139 people were killed in 1045 terrorist attacks in the country. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, in particular, emerged as the regions most affected by terrorism.
According to IEP, the increased activities of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, and violence in Balochistan played an important role in the rise of terrorist activities in Pakistan.
Therefore, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2026, Bangladesh is currently in a much better position than India and Pakistan in terms of the impact of terrorism.
The fact that no terrorist attack was recorded in the country in 2025 is one of the main reasons for the improvement in Bangladesh’s score and position. Therefore, in the context of South Asia, Bangladesh’s position in terms of the impact of terrorism appears to be relatively positive.
In South Asia, Nepal ranks 89th and Bhutan 100th, placing Bangladesh third in the region in terms of the impact of terrorism.
Within Bangladesh’s such strong position reflected by IEP, a report by the UN Security Council has expressed concern over the growing activities of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS. The report, published on August 10, said that AQIS is based in Afghanistan and is trying to expand its activities into Bangladesh, India’s Jammu and Kashmir, and Myanmar. The report specifically warned that the group is trying to establish a base in Bangladesh by forming active cells.
After the report was published, the Bangladesh government and the Ministry of Home Affairs rejected its statement as “Assumption-driven.” Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed made it clear that this is not news of any specific militant activity or attack in Bangladesh. Rather, it is a warning that militants may try to take advantage of an opportunity in the future.
Therefore, the government believes there is no reason to take any hasty action based only on this report without specific evidence.
However, immediately after the publication of the UN report, India reacted and expressed its interest in working jointly with Bangladesh to fight militancy.
At a press conference in New Delhi on August 18, Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that terrorism and national security should be a concern for everyone. Because it is a common curse for everyone, and we all want to fight this problem together.
But India’s immediate proposal naturally raised questions about whether India had any role or influence in preparing this report. In fact, there is a bitter experience behind this suspicion among the people of Bangladesh. Over the past one and a half decades, one of the main bases of the close relationship between India and the Sheikh Hasina government was counterterrorism. India did not see this only as a matter of regional security.
Rather, it also used it as a logic for political support for the Hasina government. Various analyses have also shown that, for India, counterterrorism was one of the main considerations in supporting the Hasina government. As a result, the issue of militancy is now not simply a security issue for the people of Bangladesh. The people of Bangladesh have experienced India supporting the authoritarian Hasina government by using this issue in the past. Therefore, there are now questions in the public mind about whether a similar Indian activity is starting again. So, it is not unusual for such questions to arise.
This report is not a proposal or Resolution of the UN Security Council. It is the 38th assessment report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (ASMT) under the Security Council.
This team helps the relevant committee in implementing UN sanctions against Al-Qaeda and ISIS. It also monitors various activities of these militant groups, including their activities, funding, and arms supplies, and regularly provides information and assessments to the Security Council.
However, this report has a major limitation. The team prepares its reports by considering information and assessments received from different member states.
This 38th report also used information and assessments provided by member states.
And this is where an important question arises: To what extent did the information and assessments provided by India, as a member state of the United Nations, influence the Bangladesh-related part of this report?
It should be noted that this UN Security Council team does not collect intelligence information by visiting countries itself. It depends on information sent by different member states in the region, including India.
Therefore, it is not unusual for the information provided by India to have a major indirect influence or shadow over this 38th report. This is because the report mentions an attack near Delhi’s Red Fort in November 2025 and places the blame for it on AQIS, which was investigated by the Indian government itself.
Based on its own investigation, the Indian government has claimed that the militants are trying to expand their network into Bangladesh by crossing the border. The Indian government has shared information and assessments from its intelligence agencies with the UN team through regular meetings. In other words, the intelligence information provided by India may have been used as a source of information for this report. In this way, the intelligence information provided by India may have played a major role in the process of preparing the report.
The 38th assessment report of the UN Security Council team does not mainly prove the truth of any incident. Rather, it is only a warning about possible future threats and is part of a Threat Assessment. Member states such as India submit their concerns to the United Nations in written form, and the UN records them as “concerns.” The UN report does not say that a militant attack has taken place in Bangladesh or that militant activities have increased. Rather, Bangladesh is mentioned in only two lines in paragraph 101 of this long report. It only says that AQIS is trying to use Bangladesh to expand its activities.
But the Indian government started promoting these two lines in an exaggerated way. Indian and some international media also presented the issue in such a way that it appeared as if a major militant threat had emerged in Bangladesh. At the same time, India’s Ministry of External Affairs quickly described it as a regional security risk and proposed working jointly with Bangladesh to address it.
In fact, geopolitics lies behind India’s response and proposal. According to many political analysts, Indian documents and information provided by India have a significant influence on such regional reports by the United Nations. As part of its geopolitical strategy, India maintains strong lobbying in international forums. It tries to draw the attention of the international community by linking its domestic incidents with global terrorism. At times, Western countries also form opinions based on intelligence information provided by New Delhi without closely examining the internal politics of South Asia. As Western countries are strategic partners of India, they sometimes do not directly challenge some of Delhi’s narratives. Instead, they include them in their documents.
Because of these factors, there is a risk that a certain geopolitical bias may enter such regional reports by the United Nations. For this reason, the Bangladesh government has reasonably rejected this report as Assumption-driven. Bangladesh has clearly stated that it will not pay attention to any report based on the political agenda or assumptions of a single country.
Zubair Hasan is a political
analyst.
