US Designates Taliban With 'Pakistan Links' As Global Terrorists
The US government on Thursday designated six individuals as global terrorists. The individuals are accused of supporting the Taliban and Haqqani network in Afghanistan.
The Trump administration stressed their links to Pakistan, The Associated Press reported.
According to the report, among them are senior members of Taliban regime in Afghanistan – 1996 to 2001, including former central bank governor Abdul Samad Sani.
The six individuals, said to have been part of Taliban leadership bodies in Pakistan, are alleged to have provided financing and weapons for militants involved in attacks on US-led coalition forces.
“The Pakistan government must work with us to deny the Taliban and the Haqqani network sanctuary and to aggressively target terrorist fundraising,” Mandelker, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement, as quoted by AP.
The blacklisted individuals include: Abdul Qadeer Basir Abdul Baseer, said to have led the finance commission of the Taliban leadership Shura in Peshawar.
He is alleged to have provided tens of thousands of dollars for Taliban attacks in Kunar province of Afghanistan last fall.
One notable name on the list is that of Hafiz Mohammed Popalzai, said to have served for several years on the Taliban finance commission and been in charge of the group's finances for southern and western Afghanistan. He is alleged to have passed on 10 million euros paid to the Taliban for the release of hostages in mid-2011 to the finance commission's leader in Quetta, the AP report said.
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https://www.tolonews.com/afghanistan...bal-terrorists
Pakistan frees Islamist cleric who helped Taliban against US
A Pakistani court has issued the release of a radical anti-U.S. cleric who traveled to Afghanistan with thousands of volunteers to help the Taliban fight against the American troops after the 2001 invasion.
Sufi Mohammad will be set free and the paperwork for his release are already being processed, Fida Gul, a defense lawyer, said.
Mohammad, who was put behind bars in 2009, is also known as the father-in-law of Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Taliban offshoot in Pakistan.
The court’s decision could further inflame U.S.-Pakistani tensions due to President Trump’s decision to withdraw aid to Pakistan over allegations of harboring Islamic militants.
The Trump administration said Pakistani authorities are knowingly ignoring militants in their country, while the U.S. had “foolishly” given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years.
“They have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools,” Trump tweeted last week. “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”
Pakistani officials denied the accusations, saying the country has made great sacrifices in the war on terror since September 11, 2001.
“We have been the victim of terrorist attacks and how can we tolerate the presence of militants on our soil,” Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, said over the weekend.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...gainst-us.html
The White House is right to suspend aid to Pakistan
President Trump’s decision to freeze approximately $2 billion in U.S. security assistance to Pakistan has received cautious support from senior lawmakers and foreign policy analysts. And while the political and military calculus of suspending aid payments is complex, the Trump administration’s approach is sound.
The $33.9 billion Washington has sent to Islamabad since 2002 may have earned it the right to supply American military efforts in Afghanistan through Pakistani territory, but it has failed to deter Pakistan from undermining those same efforts through its support for extremist groups. And while Washington and Islamabad worked successfully together in the hunt for senior al Qaeda members during the early years of the war, ties between the two countries have since been held hostage to mutual distrust, personality conflict, and even outright hostility. The occasional display of grudging cooperation notwithstanding, Pakistan has repeatedly shown its unwillingness to sever ties with U.S. enemies in Afghanistan and South Asia.
American priorities in the region are not Pakistani priorities. Washington and Islamabad have sharply different views on what constitutes success in Afghanistan, on how the Pakistani military should conduct its campaign against militancy, and on the nature of India’s regional influence.
Since 9/11, the United States has viewed Afghanistan as, first and foremost, a counterterrorism problem. Before the United States got distracted with institution-building and counterinsurgency operations, U.S. forces deployed to Afghanistan in October 2001 in order to drive the Taliban from Kabul, to uproot al Qaeda’s infrastructure, and to capture or kill its leader, Osama bin Laden. The mission was about retaliating against the group that had conducted the worst-ever terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Pakistan’s main goal in Afghanistan, on the other hand, is to prevent the country from forging a strategic relationship with India. The historical and geopolitical rivalry with its larger neighbor has governed Pakistan’s national security policy since its founding in 1947. Pakistan’s military leadership has long seen Afghanistan as an arena in which to combat an Indian influence they view as destabilizing, perfidious, and threatening to Pakistan’s own sovereignty and national security. To the United States, Indian investment in Afghanistan and constructive Indian-Afghan relations are valuable for Kabul’s fiscal and political health. In Pakistan, these same developments are understood as efforts by India to enhance its geopolitical power at the expense of Pakistan, and to increase pressure on Pakistan’s military via a new front on its western border.
Despite their bravado, Pakistani officials realize how economically vibrant, politically stable, and militarily capable New Delhi is in comparison to Islamabad. Pakistan has attempted to compensate for this strategic imbalance in three ways: by improving the range of its ballistic missile capability so its warheads can strike deep into India; by accelerating the pace of its nuclear weapons development; and by continuing to develop relationships with extremist groups that can be counted on to help check Indian influence.
In the disputed territory of Kashmir, in Afghanistan, and in India itself, Pakistan-based extremist groups have launched attacks on military installations and civilian targets, killing hundreds of people and bringing the two nuclear-armed rivals closer to a military confrontation. While the Pakistani government has always denied direct involvement with these organizations, U.S. officials believe that Islamabad continues to view these militants as critical anti-India tools in its national security toolbox. Some senior American officials have taken these concerns public. In congressional testimony, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen noted that Pakistani intelligence provided Haqqani militants with support during their attacks against a U.S. army base and a Kabul hotel. In 2008, after a group of militants attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul, U.S. officials blamed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate for assisting in the attack. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton reportedly confronted her Pakistani counterparts with intelligence linking the ISI to insurgents who fought against U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Yet even these complaints, made in public and backed by strong evidence, failed to change the Pakistanis’ behavior. Washington mistakenly believed Pakistani leaders would change the India-centric outlook that had been ingrained in the national psyche for seven decades in exchange for tens of billions of dollars. But Pakistan views the cultivation of groups like the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Jaish-e-Mohammed as essential to its national security. As long as Pakistan’s leadership continues to view India as its main concern, its ties to these extremist groups will always be worth more than tens of billions of dollars from Washington.
To be clear, the stick is unlikely to work where the carrot failed. Those in Washington who hope that freezing aid may suddenly scare Islamabad back into line will almost certainly be disappointed. The national security interests of the United States and Pakistan diverge on Afghanistan and South Asia to such an extent that even tougher measures - such as outright aid termination, the withdrawal of Pakistan’s status as an ally, or selective sanctions on Pakistani security officials - are unlikely to be potent enough to sever Pakistan’s ties with the militants its intelligence services have courted for decades. The Trump administration rightly judged that it was time for the United States to cut its losses.
Pakistan is not a true ally, friend, or partner to the United States, but a nation whose security interests and counterterrorism goals in South Asia are not aligned with what Washington is hoping to accomplish. Until those interests are in sync - a dubious prospect at best - the Haqqani network will continue to live in comfort within Pakistan’s borders, confident in the notion that the Pakistani military officers running national security will leave them alone. American policymakers must take a step back, thoroughly evaluate the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, and determine whether further cooperation is even possible. That decision must be made carefully and explained to the American taxpayers whose hard-earned money has, for decades, funded Pakistan’s aid payments. Until then, it is long past time for Washington to stop throwing good money after bad. (Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities. @DanDePetris)
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-d...-idUSKBN1FE21K
Pakistan Confirms Inclusion on FATF's Terrorist Financing List in June
Pakistani authorities this week confirmed the country is going back on the "gray list" of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial watchdog that monitors terror financing and money laundering.
The country's status has been unclear for weeks, as Pakistani authorities lobbied the FATF that they have taken adequate measures to curb terror-related financial crimes in the country. But they acknowledged Wednesday that those efforts apparently had failed.
"Pakistan will be assigned to the gray list in June, once an action plan has been mutually negotiated," Muhammad Faisal, Pakistan's foreign office spokesperson, told reporters Wednesday.
The decision to add Pakistan to the terror watch list was made during FATF's meetings last week in Paris, where representatives of different member countries and international organizations convened to discuss the issue.
Pakistan fears the designation will hurt its economy, deter foreign investments and take a toll on its access to the international financial markets.
This is not the first time Pakistan will be added to the FATF's terrorist watch list. Pakistan was on the list from 2012 to 2015.
U.S. motion
The recent designation follows a motion introduced by the United States, along with France, Britain and Germany, alleging that Pakistan has failed to adhere to the FATF guidelines on terror financing and anti-money laundering regulations.
Lisa Curtis, a United States National Security Council official, visited Islamabad following the FATF decision. "There has been a longstanding concern about ongoing deficiencies in Pakistan's implementation of its anti-money laundering/counterterrorism finance regime," she told Pakistani news media.
Terror financing remains a major concern and challenge in Pakistan, where militant groups allegedly raise money under the guise of religion and welfare for the poor and instead spend it on terror-related activities inside Pakistan, and in India and Afghanistan.
Pakistan's measures
In response to growing international pressure, Pakistan did take measures against some of these militant groups and their financial sources, but apparently the actions were not viewed as adequate by FATF.
Last month, the country amended its anti-terrorism law that allows the government to blacklist charity organizations linked to Hafiz Saeed, a U.S.- and U.N.-designated global terrorist.
Saeed is believed to be the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that claimed more than 160 lives, including of six Americans.
Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and its subsidiary charity organization, Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), are considered terrorist organizations by the United Nations and the U.S. State Department. Both organizations led by Saeed have fundraising networks in Pakistan.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert raised the issue again last week. "How many times have we talked about the person who Pakistan let out of house arrest, who was responsible for the Mumbai attacks back in 2008 that killed so many people, including Americans, too?" she said, referring to Saeed.
Washington suspended $2 billion worth of aid to Pakistan last year, and is pressuring Islamabad to cut its alleged ties to Islamist militants waging war in Afghanistan and India.
Pakistan denies the charges and maintains that it has carried out military operations against terror groups throughout the country indiscriminately and that there are no terror safe havens in the country.
https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-f...t/4276441.html
After FATF grey-listing, Pakistan faces EU black-listing threat
The Financial Action Taken Force’s (FATF) decision to put Pakistan on its grey list will not only make it difficult for Islamabad to attract foreign investments, but may also invite punitive action by the European Union as the bloc might put the country on its own blacklist.
Pakistan, following the FATF decision last month, entered into a phase where it has to not only submit an action plan against controlling terror fund at the body’s next plenary in Paris end-June but also give a political undertaking that it would implement the steps, officials here told ET.
If Islamabad fails to comply with the rules of the grey list and an action plan is not adopted, then the country runs the risk of being included on to the blacklist of the FATF that currently features Iran and North Korea.
At the same time, South Asia’s second biggest country runs the risk also of being put on blacklist by the EU. Such a decision by its top trading partner could severely hit that country’s industry, especially the lucrative textile sector, as well as banking channels with Europe, India’s foreign ministry officials familiar with the subject said. The motion to put Pak on the grey list was jointly moved by the US and three key powers of Europe: the UK, France and Germany.
Pakistan had earlier been pulled up by members of EU Parliament for its failure to control terrorism emanating from its soil. The issue of crossborder terror will figure prominently when French President meets the Indian PM here on March 10.
The EU is Pakistan’s most important trading partner, European Commission figures show. This puts the EU in a strong negotiating position. According to Indian officials, FATF’s decision to put Pakistan on the grey list came after much deliberations. The February 18-23 plenary in Paris witnessed hectic negotiations from day one till the final day as India, supported by its partners, put forward strong arguments against Pakistan’s lacklustre efforts to control financing of terror groups.
Last ditch efforts by Islamabad, including action against Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, did not yield results as even China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) finally agreed to counterviews, the officials said. Realpolitik came into play on the morning of February 23, with Beijing refusing to support Islamabad.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...w/63161750.cms
