The obligation to comply with a 10-point action plan by the global anti-terror financial watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), should induce soul searching and re-think in Pakistan.
Alarm bells should have rung early this year when both China and Saudi Arabia withdrew their support to our narrative on terrorism. Earlier, we also ignored the declaration at BRICS Summit in China naming Pakistani militant groups as threat to regional security and continued to live in denial.
Yet, Pakistan secured a temporary three-month reprieve on the plea that more time was needed to comply with the FATF requirements and avoid being placed on its dreaded watch-list.
When the reprieve period ended, Pakistan was placed in the grey list in June with the threat of further blacklisting in looming large. It followed, early this month, by Pentagon cancelling $300 million in military aid to Pakistan, allegedly for not taking decisive action against militants.
The finance minister has said that the country will soon be out of the grey list and there was no chance of being placed in the black list. There are some deficiencies in anti-money laundering regime, currency smuggling and hawala in financing of proscribed organisations, which will be addressed in our own interest, he said adding: “there is nothing we cannot comply, FATF or no FATF.”
Is there something we cannot comply with? Yes, indeed there is.
Merely strengthening the anti-money laundering regime will not enable Pakistan to get out of the grey list. Choking finances is a tool for curtailing proscribed terror groups operating under different names. The real issue is ending these organisations.
The focus of FATF, therefore, is on taking action against entities sanctioned under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267 and incapacitating them totally. With Hafiz Saeed listed in the UNSC Resolution 1267, there is definitely something that has not been complied with, at least thus far.
To comply with the UNSC Resolution, Pakistan must face its moment of truth, admit mistakes and deal with the Mumbai mayhem, planned and launched from its soil. Nothing short of it will do. Can or will it be done?
The Mumbai mayhem was perpetrated in November 2008 within days of President Asif Zardari offering NFU (no first use of atom bomb) to India. This fact alone places the incident on a pedestal that cannot be trivialised.
No wonder that the case has remained stalled for the past decade. Dilatory tactics by defendants, frequent change of trial judges, assassination of the case prosecutor and retracting testimonies by some key witnesses have contributed to this procrastination. By comparison, consider the JIT formed with ISI and MI representatives in the Panama case, day-to-day hearings held and a prime minister sent to jail in less than 10 months for holding a foreign residency permit.
Investigations carried out in the case by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) have already established some highly pertinent facts about the Mumbai attacks but it refuses to proceed. Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of these attacks, was a Pakistani national whose his early life has been traced and well documented. The training camp near Thatta in Sindh where the LeT terrorists were trained have been identified and sealed. Casings of explosive devices recovered from this camp duly matched. The operation room in Karachi from where the sea-launched operation was controlled has also been identified. The fishing trawler used by the terrorists for hijacking an Indian trawler to sail to Mumbai was also recovered by investigators. It has been brought back and repainted. The alleged commander and his deputies were identified and arrested and brought to face trial as well as some foreign-based financiers and facilitators.
The investigators rigorously pursued the money trail and linked it to the accused who were arrested. The communications through Voice over Internet Protocol were also unearthed.
We have reached a point where a choice has to be made: to implement the action plan and confront these proscribed organisations, or challenge and hoodwink the FATF.
Covert moves are already afoot for quite some time to mainstream the externally-oriented proscribed organisations and confer upon them legitimacy. Confronting them will mean confronting those supporting their mainstreaming.
Is Pakistan, then, likely to end up confronting the FATF instead? The ‘same page’ song after an eight-hour-long briefing at the GHQ may be a pointer but some soul searching and a hard rethink will not be out of place.
The writer is a former senator and member of Defence and Human Rights Committees of the Senate of Pakistan
Alarm bells should have rung early this year when both China and Saudi Arabia withdrew their support to our narrative on terrorism. Earlier, we also ignored the declaration at BRICS Summit in China naming Pakistani militant groups as threat to regional security and continued to live in denial.
Yet, Pakistan secured a temporary three-month reprieve on the plea that more time was needed to comply with the FATF requirements and avoid being placed on its dreaded watch-list.
When the reprieve period ended, Pakistan was placed in the grey list in June with the threat of further blacklisting in looming large. It followed, early this month, by Pentagon cancelling $300 million in military aid to Pakistan, allegedly for not taking decisive action against militants.
The finance minister has said that the country will soon be out of the grey list and there was no chance of being placed in the black list. There are some deficiencies in anti-money laundering regime, currency smuggling and hawala in financing of proscribed organisations, which will be addressed in our own interest, he said adding: “there is nothing we cannot comply, FATF or no FATF.”
Is there something we cannot comply with? Yes, indeed there is.
Merely strengthening the anti-money laundering regime will not enable Pakistan to get out of the grey list. Choking finances is a tool for curtailing proscribed terror groups operating under different names. The real issue is ending these organisations.
The focus of FATF, therefore, is on taking action against entities sanctioned under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267 and incapacitating them totally. With Hafiz Saeed listed in the UNSC Resolution 1267, there is definitely something that has not been complied with, at least thus far.
To comply with the UNSC Resolution, Pakistan must face its moment of truth, admit mistakes and deal with the Mumbai mayhem, planned and launched from its soil. Nothing short of it will do. Can or will it be done?
The Mumbai mayhem was perpetrated in November 2008 within days of President Asif Zardari offering NFU (no first use of atom bomb) to India. This fact alone places the incident on a pedestal that cannot be trivialised.
No wonder that the case has remained stalled for the past decade. Dilatory tactics by defendants, frequent change of trial judges, assassination of the case prosecutor and retracting testimonies by some key witnesses have contributed to this procrastination. By comparison, consider the JIT formed with ISI and MI representatives in the Panama case, day-to-day hearings held and a prime minister sent to jail in less than 10 months for holding a foreign residency permit.
Investigations carried out in the case by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) have already established some highly pertinent facts about the Mumbai attacks but it refuses to proceed. Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of these attacks, was a Pakistani national whose his early life has been traced and well documented. The training camp near Thatta in Sindh where the LeT terrorists were trained have been identified and sealed. Casings of explosive devices recovered from this camp duly matched. The operation room in Karachi from where the sea-launched operation was controlled has also been identified. The fishing trawler used by the terrorists for hijacking an Indian trawler to sail to Mumbai was also recovered by investigators. It has been brought back and repainted. The alleged commander and his deputies were identified and arrested and brought to face trial as well as some foreign-based financiers and facilitators.
The investigators rigorously pursued the money trail and linked it to the accused who were arrested. The communications through Voice over Internet Protocol were also unearthed.
We have reached a point where a choice has to be made: to implement the action plan and confront these proscribed organisations, or challenge and hoodwink the FATF.
Covert moves are already afoot for quite some time to mainstream the externally-oriented proscribed organisations and confer upon them legitimacy. Confronting them will mean confronting those supporting their mainstreaming.
Is Pakistan, then, likely to end up confronting the FATF instead? The ‘same page’ song after an eight-hour-long briefing at the GHQ may be a pointer but some soul searching and a hard rethink will not be out of place.
The writer is a former senator and member of Defence and Human Rights Committees of the Senate of Pakistan