Need to strike at root causes of extremism: Kerry

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday said there is a need to strike at the root causes of extremism, adding that the battle to counter and defeat these extremists is a global cause requiring consistent focus and persistent action.

"There is other evidence in our cyber frame work which is focused on reducing cyber crime and encouraging responsible behavior in cyber space. The threats we face today are not traditional kind of threats. We face adversaries who have no air force, no navy, they don't wear uniforms but they are deadly none the less and chief among them are terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda, LeT, Jais-e-Mohammad and others," said Kerry while interacting with the students of IIT Delhi.

"The battle to counter and defeat these extremists cannot and will not be one by one nation alone, it is a global cause requiring consistent focus and persistent action and the willingness to adapt our tactics as the threats evolve," he added.

Asserting that both India and the US know the pain of terrorism, Kerry said the intelligence agencies of the two sides now exchange information constantly to avoid repeating the tragedies.

"Our security personnel are learning from one another. We recently signed special agreement to share terrorist screening data and we are untied in our efforts to dispel extremist propaganda and ties. Now together we recognize that those who commit terrorists' acts fundamentally have no respect for human life and certainly not for the dignity of other people. Their goal is to kill, sell fear and division," said Kerry.

"But we learnt long ago in World War II, when we said the words never again, that we would not accept people killing people because of who they are or what they belief. So, we must not and we will not allow them to succeed. We also recognize that we must respond to spurge not only with full force of our militaries and our justice system but we must strike at the root causes of violent extremism itself. And we have to work hard to understand the different variations of the causes because it does vary country to country, location to location even though they are constants in those causes," he added.