Insurmountable odds

Pakistan's desperate attempts to hoodwink FATF have persistently failed but its leadership hardly seems to take any lessons
By Prabhu Dayal

It’s a well-known fact that Pakistan is the nerve center of terrorism. Jamat-ud-Dawah, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen carry out their terrorist operations against India from Pakistan’s territory. Moreover, many terrorist organizations like the Taliban, Haqqani network, al Qaeda and Islamic State carry out attacks in Afghanistan and have safe sanctuaries inside Pakistani territory. Pakistan has been claiming that these organizations are based in Afghanistan, have sufficient funds of their own and that Pakistan is not financing or helping them. However, the US is aware that the ISI, the Pakistan army’s intelligence wing, is financing and helping the leaders of these organizations.

Abraham Lincoln had once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

This is a simple lesson that Pakistan refuses to learn while relentlessly trying to hoodwink the international community. Therefore, one is heartened by the fact that following its recent meeting on June 20-25, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) sent across a stern message that it had not been fooled by Pakistan’s jiggery-pokery.

The FATF is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1989 at the initiative of the G7 to develop policies to combat money laundering and, in 2001, its mandate was expanded to include terror financing. The FATF maintains two different lists which are informally called the ‘blacklist’ and the ‘grey list’. The blacklist comprises “countries or jurisdictions with such serious strategic deficiencies against which the FATF calls on its members and non-members to apply counter-measures”. The grey list includes those countries for which “FATF calls on its members to apply enhanced due diligence measures proportionate to the risks arising from the deficiencies associated with the country”.

Pakistan was added to the grey list in October 2012 but managed to come out of it in February 2015. It was added to the grey list for the second time in June 2018.  Leading the change FATF works with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank which take into account its findings and recommendations. For example, the IMF puts conditions for bail-out packages based on the fulfilment of FATF-related compliances. Thus, the naming and shaming by the FATF has costs, which Pakistan has found out. Pakistan’s economy is already in shambles, and the FATF grey-listing adds to its woes. Therefore, Pakistan is desperately trying to wriggle its way out of the ‘grey list’. When Pakistan was put on the ‘grey list’ in 2018, a 27-point ‘Combating the Financing of Terrorism’ (CFT) action plan was given to it that aimed at putting meaningful curbs on terror financing. Since then, Pakistan has been attempting to convince the FATF that it is complying with the action plan in order to exit the grey list. At its plenary meeting between October 21-23, 2020, the FATF had voted to continue keeping Pakistan on the ‘grey list’ for its failure to substantially deliver on six of the 27 action points. Then, at its next meeting on 22-25 February 2021, the FATF noted that Pakistan had largely addressed 24 out of the 27 action points. Now, at the recent meeting between June 20-25, the FATF has stated that “Pakistan has completed 26 of the 27 action items listed in its 2018 action plan.” No doubt, Pakistan thinks that its efforts are yielding some success. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said there was “no room” to keep the country on the FATF’s ‘grey list’ since it has implemented 26 out of the 27 points of the action handed out by the global body against money laundering and terror financing. However, the FATF has not let Pakistan off the hook because it wants the country “to address as soon as possible the remaining CFT item by demonstrating that terror financing investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups.”

There are eight UN-designated terror groups that were named by FATF in the past – the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation, al Qaeda and Islamic State. Pakistan has failed to convince the FATF that it is serious about taking action against these terror groups. Moreover, the FATF has given Pakistan a new six-point action plan that primarily focuses on combating money laundering. Thus, Pakistan will continue to find itself between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the FATF is unrelenting in its insistence that Pakistan should come clean, completely break its ties with all terrorist organizations and put meaningful curbs on them. On the other hand, the Imran Khan government is unable to break these ties because Pakistan’s deep state is hand in glove with terrorism and uses it as an instrument of state policy.

It’s a well-known fact that Pakistan is the nerve center of terrorism. Jamat-ud-Dawah, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen carry out their terrorist operations against India from Pakistan’s territory. Moreover, many terrorist organizations like the Taliban, Haqqani network, al Qaeda and Islamic State carry out attacks in Afghanistan and have safe sanctuaries inside Pakistani territory. Pakistan has been claiming that these organizations are based in Afghanistan, have sufficient funds of their own and that Pakistan is not financing or helping them. However, the US is aware that the ISI, the Pakistan army’s intelligence wing, is financing and helping the leaders of these organizations.

It may be recalled that Pakistan had hired a top US lobbyist firm to push its case with the Trump administration and to also get bailed out of the grey list. In pursuit of its gameplan to hoodwink the FATF, Pakistan had also hurriedly pushed through three legislations — the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill, 2020, the Anti-Money Laundering (Second Amendment) Bill and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Waqf Properties Bill — by calling a special session of the Parliament in September. However, it was apparent that these were merely in the nature of window-dressing, for there was no let-up in the terrorist attacks being abetted from Pakistani soil against India or Afghanistan. Clearly, the FATF is not so gullible to be taken in by Pakistan’s stratagems. India bears the brunt of Pakistan’s use of terrorism and sees the FATF as an important body that can put pressure on it to dismantle the infrastructure that supports cross-border attacks. India has also furnished evidence to show how Pakistan continues to be a safe haven for UN-designated terrorists such as Dawood Ibrahim, Masood Azhar, Hafiz Saeed and Zakir ur Rahman Lakhvi. The FATF’s decision to keep Pakistan on the grey list has been a vindication of India’s stand.

(First published in millennium post)

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