Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked to reconcile a ‘national list’ of proscribed organisations as per the blacklist of the United Nations. However this will not be done in a hurry. For months the US has been asking for the Haqqanis to be put on the list and Pakistan has been stalling. Why?
The Al Qaeda and Taliban Committee of the UN Security Council says on its website that the committee “oversees the implementation by member states of the three sanctions measures (assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo) imposed against targeted individuals and entities associated with Al Qaeda, as designated by the committee in its sanctions list.” In December 2010, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs notification said that the individuals and entities listed its own orders reflected the updates made by the UN SC committee. Thus individuals would be subjected to travel restrictions, arms embargo and their funds would be frozen. The UN list contains names of organisations like the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, banned in Pakistan in 2001, and the Harkatul Mujahideen, along with all the aliases they have operated under, and any affiliations they have with other groups. Lashkar-e-Taiba along with 27 aliases that the organisation uses including Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) and the Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation are also included. The Foreign Office notification of December 2010 mean that these parties should have been subject to sanctions, but they were not. Pakistan came under international fire then and was put on a black list by a global regulatory body, The Financial Action Task Force, as it presented a risk to the international financial system. We were taken off this black list, once Nacta, the counterterrorism authority, recently put on its website a list of proscribed organisations with 60 organisations on it, and a separate list of organisations under observation including the JuD and the Haqqani Network. And then the list was taken down, and now the whole website is down. Why?
There is some politicking going around behind the scenes. Putting the Haqqanis and JuD on the list would require legal action to be taken by the state, and it is clearly loathe to do so. Thus they are stalling for time, for some sort of deal making. But it is time that the government and law enforcement be clear on its strategy. Behind the scenes deals with terrorist have only got us into more trouble in the past. Either we go after them with full force, and deal with the consequences, or we deal with the consequences of appeasement as we have been for the past fifteen years.