Python3 skips straight to else statement

I am calling a counter function. Every time I call this function, the print('counter: ', counter) increases as it should. However, python does not go in to read any of the if/elif statements. It always jumps to the else statement and prints 'this is the beginning'.

counter = 0

def counter():
    counter += 1
    print('counter: ', counter)

    if end_indication == 'Yes':
        print('this is the end')

    else:
        pass

    if int(counter) == 2:#also tried if counter ==2:
        print('Hello World')

    elif counter == 3:
        print('Hello Jurassic World')

    else:
        print('This is the beginning')

Current output:

counter: 1
This is the beginning
counter: 2
This is the beginning
counter 3:
This is the beginning

Desired output:

counter: 1
This is the beginning
counter: 2
Hello World
counter: 3 
Hello Jurassic World

I've tried printing type(counter), but that returns int.