The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Thursday retained Pakistan in its grey list and urged the country to do more to investigate and prosecute senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terror groups involved in terror financing.

FATF president Marcus Pleyer said after a three-day plenary meeting of the multilateral watchdog that Jordan, Mali and Turkey had been added to the list of countries under increased monitoring or grey list because of serious issues in their regimes to counter money laundering and terror financing.

“Pakistan remains under increased monitoring,” Pleyer told an online news briefing. “Pakistan has taken a number of important steps but needs to further demonstrate that investigations and prosecutions are being pursued against the senior leadership of UN-designated terror groups,” he said.

Pakistan was added to the grey list in mid-2018 and given a 27-point action plan by FATF to control money laundering and terror financing. In June this year, FATF asked Pakistan to implement another seven-point action plan to address serious deficiencies related to money laundering.

In Thursday’s briefing, the FATF President insisted Pakistan must deliver on the sole remaining item in the 2018 action plan by demonstrating that its investigations and prosecutions are targeting senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated groups.

FATF said in a statement that Pakistan had made significant progress in addressing its “strategic counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies”.

The statement added: “Pakistan should continue to work to address its other strategically important AML/CFT deficiencies, namely by: (1) providing evidence that it actively seeks to enhance the impact of sanctions beyond its jurisdiction by nominating additional individuals and entities for designation at the UN; and (2) demonstrating an increase in ML investigations and prosecutions and that proceeds of crime continue to be restrained and confiscated in line with Pakistan’s risk profile, including working with foreign counterparts to trace, freeze, and confiscate assets.”

The FATF is expected to review Pakistan’s performance on its recommendations during the next plenary and working group meetings between February 27 and March 4, 2022.

In a recent television interview, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan revealed that his government was in the process of negotiating with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a banned terrorist group credited with hundreds of terror attacks in Pakistan, killing thousands of Pakistani soldiers and civilians. According to government’s own estimates, more than 80,000 people have been killed in the last two decades due to terrorism, mainly carried out by the TTP. 

“We are in talks with some of the groups on a reconciliation process,” he said in the interview, given to a Turkish news channel. “There are different groups which form the TTP and some of them want to talk to our government for peace,” the PM further added.

The PM said he is expecting a deal to come out of the talks but again nothing is certain. He also pointed out that he sees dialogue as the only solution and that the government will “forgive” the militants if an agreement is reached.

Pakistan made such peace deals with militants in the past too but they all led to the violent groups being strengthened and challenging the writ of the government even more.

Major peace agreements in the past include the Shakai Agreement in 2004, Sararogha Agreement in 2005, Miranshah Agreement in 2006 and the Swat Peace Agreement in 2009. 

This latest revelation by PM Khan has left many baffled and enraged within and outside Pakistan, especially those among the Pashtun ethnic community, who have been directly affected by the bloodshed unleashed by the Pakistani Taliban since 9/11 when such terrorists were allowed to settle in the Pakistani tribal belt and adjacent areas by General Pervez Musharraf, the military dictator ruling Pakistan until the year 2008. 

Pakistan appears to have a terrible track record of offering peace deals to various terrorist groups. Even now, when the world seems to be questioning the Afghan Taliban and their occupation of Afghanistan, Islamabad has taken it upon itself to campaign for the hardline Islamist group and has been asking the world to accept their occupation as a legitimate takeover. 

Although the Afghan and the Pakistani Taliban have different objectives, much of their ideology overlaps and they usually coexist in the same geographical space, and often provide help to each other. There are media reports that the Afghan Taliban are also involved in the negotiations between the TTP and the Pakistani government, but nothing has been officially confirmed. 

Pakistan is also known to host Kashmiri and anti-India militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which continue to operate freely in Pakistan, by running religious schools and mosques across the country.

The state, mainly the Pakistani military, has also been promoting Sunni extremist and terror groups like Sipah e Sahaba (now known as Ahl e Sunnat Wal Jamat – ASWJ) to counter ethno-nationalism in Balochistan, and Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) to divide the vote of the mainstream political parties. 

And while Khan’s government is keen to appease the Pakistani Taliban, the group have denied having such talks and called on its fighters to continue their attacks. 

“Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has never announced a ceasefire. The TTP fighters should continue their attacks wherever they are,” TTP spokesperson Muhammad Khurasani said in a statement, released following Khan’s revelations. The group’s attacks have also seen an upsurge in the recent year, with reports emerging that they have once again started to regroup in the Pakistani tribal belt.

Pakistan’s Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has categorically announced that the appointment of Director General (DG) for the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) is the prerogative of the Prime Minister, thereby effectively rejecting the announcement issued by Pakistani military a few days ago, in which the military had announced a new chief for the spy agency.

“The appointment of the new DG ISI will be done as per the rules and regulations… The authority [to appoint a new DG ISI] rests with the Prime Minister of Pakistan,” the minister told a press briefing earlier today. 

On 6th October, Pakistan’s military media wing the Inter-Services Public relations (ISPR) had announced a major reshuffle with several transfers and new postings including the appointment of Lt. Gen. Nadeem Anjum as the new DG ISI. He was to replace Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, who was made Peshawar Corps Commander. However, the Prime Minister office, which normally endorses such appointments with an official notification remained silent. 

According to media reports, behind closed doors, Prime Minister Imran Khan told the military chief General Qamar Bajwa that he was not on board with the decision to change the DG ISI which has led to a standoff between the civilian and military leadership. The tussle between the two sides publicly surfaced the first time during the recent National Security Committee meeting, which was attended by Gen. Hameed, as the DG ISI, despite being already transferred out by the military announcement.

This appears to be the first public dispute between Bajwa and Khan, who was brought into power in 2018 with the backing of the military. 

According to insiders, Khan credits Hameed with his victory in office and wants him to continue in the position so that he can secure another term for Khan when general elections take place in 2023. There are also speculations that Khan wants to elevate him to become the army chief next year, when Bajwa finishes his extended tenure in office. However, some argue that with the new law passed by the Pakistani parliament to allow indefinite extensions in the tenure of the army chiefs, it is possible that Bajwa may want to remain in office, and for that reason, he wants a team around him that he can trust, especially within the ISI, and therefore has replaced Hameed with Anjum, so as to strengthen his own position as army chief.

These civil-military tensions come at a time when Pakistan is facing multiple challenges at home and abroad. Inflation has sky-rocketed in the country, touching almost 11%. And then there is the issue of Taliban’s occupation of Afghanistan, which Pakistan is also being blamed for, given it provided refuge for the terror group for the last two decades. 

In the past, whenever such civil-military tensions have surfaced, the army, which has ruled Pakistan directly for half of its existence, has been able to send the civilian government home. And such a track record should worry Khan, who is in office with the help of the military, and lacks genuine political support in the country. 

The English Cricket Board announced last week that it has cancelled the tour of its men and women teams to Pakistan, citing security concerns. The English follow the footsteps of the New Zealand team which abandoned its series in Pakistan on the same day it was supposed to play, again citing security concerns. 

These are worrying signs for Pakistan as it once again finds itself in murky waters.

For close to a decade, Pakistan became a ‘no-go zone’ for international cricket following the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team bus at Lahore in 2009. It is once again stepping into another episode of international isolation because of the worsening security situation in the country.

In the last few years itself, there has been a rise in terrorist related incidents. From 2019 to 2020, there has been a spike of 11% in the number of terror attacks. This trend has carried on from 2020 to 2021 with a 27% increase, as per data compiled by independent observers. 

Even China has come under the cross-hairs of these terrorist groups with attacks against Chinese nationals and interest also on the rise. The latest such attack was in Khyber Pakthunkhwa where a bus carrying Chinese engineers was bombed, killing nine Chinese citizens. This is considered to be one of the deadliest attacks targeting the Chinese in Pakistan.

Who is responsible?

Pakistan has been a victim of terror for long, with thousands of civilian lives lost. The government continues to point to a “foreign hand” behind these attacks, but security experts disagree, citing Pakistan’s hobnobbing with certain terror groups while cracking down on others as a reason for the country’s terror woes.

Pakistan continues to not have a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards terrorism. It has repeatedly chosen to look away with respect to various terror outfits using Pakistani soil as a launchpad for its attacks in the region, as long as their targets are beyond Pakistani soil. Islamabad continues to extend its overt support to many of these groups, like the ones operating against India in Kashmir and also the Afghan Taliban, who lived in Pakistan for the last many years before moving back to Afghanistan after the occupation of the country by the terror group. 

Facing international scrutiny, Pakistan has claimed to take action against some of these terror groups but it is cosmetic and performative, like in the case of Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), who continues to live at his residence despite being convicted, and continues to command the LeT.

Such terror groups help Pakistan in its strategic interventions of subverting peace in Kashmir and countering Afghan nationalism that Islamabad views as a threat to its unity. 

It has recently been lobbying internationally asking the Western nations to recognize the Afghan Taliban’s occupation of Afghanistan as a legitimate takeover, despite widespread reports of human rights abuses by the terror group, which has started to target women, minorities and other vulnerable groups in the country.

The good and the bad terrorists

While Pakistan’s support has helped such terror groups to attain power, these very groups also help anti-Pakistan militants by providing them refuge, logistics and other material and non material support, given they have the same Islamist leanings. And hence, as Pakistan continues to ignore those terrorists it considers good as they serve its interests, it ends up being a victim of those terrorists that it deems bad, because most of such groups share geographical, and ideological space with each other.

Now with the recent abandonment of international cricket tours, it appears Pakistan is once again going down the path of isolation due to its own strategic follies. Will this prompt Pakistan to take some real, definitive measures against all terror groups without any distinctions? Or will the world continue to see Islamabad play the blame-game where it takes no responsibility? 

Women & children of ‘Laal Masjid’ in Islamabad are openly supporting the Afghan Taliban. Why does this infamous mosque get away with such glorification of terrorists? Is the state complicit when it comes to such open support for terrorism? What is the history of the

We analyze in our latest report:

By South Asia Press Team

Nisar Ahmed Chaudhry, a resident of Maryland, was a well-known figure in diplomatic circles in the United States. He frequently interacted with think tanks and other institutes in Washington D.C. that shape U.S. foreign policy, organising roundtables and conferences on Pakistan with the contacts he cultivated in the U.S. and Pakistani officials. He often organized events at the United States Institute of Peace, a think tank funded by the U.S. Congress. His activities as head of the Pakistan-American League, he claimed, were solely educational in nature, and in no way affiliated with the Pakistani government.

But in 2018, Chaudhry was convicted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for failing to disclose that he was an agent of the Pakistani government. The investigation into his activities revealed that for six years, between 2012 and 2018, he had influenced U.S. foreign policy in favour of Pakistan without ever disclosing it. He now faces a maximum of five years in prison.

Interestingly, there are no official Pakistani “foreign agents” or FARA registered lobbyists in the U.S., a position the Pakistani embassy’s media spokesperson maintained, speaking with a leading Pakistani daily, in April this year.

However, South Asia Press investigations found otherwise, and that there are many individuals who work to “influence operations” on behalf of the Pakistani government in the U.S., but are not declared agents.

Speaking with South Asia Press, a leading expert on Pakistan, Dr. Christine Fair said “These are also the most difficult to prove because Pakistan has been very effective at laundering the money through diasporans who then “donate” the money to think-tanks to conduct “research” and hold “conferences.”.

The role of the ISI in secret lobbying in the US

Pakistan has a long history of lobbying the United States government to influence their foreign policy in favour of Pakistan, and has for many years been hiring lobbying firms for their efforts in the US. This is legal only if the firm is registered appropriately under U.S. law. However, many individuals continue to work to influence U.S. foreign policy on behalf of the Pakistani government without disclosing their status as agents of a foreign government. The United States’ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) makes this illegal, and any agents who are connected with a foreign government or working in the interests of foreign powers in either a political or quasi-political capacity are required to disclose these connections and maintain transparency of their financial activity.

According to a former Pakistani diplomat, the unregistered lobbying is controlled by the country’s notorious intelligence service, ISI.

“The Pakistani Foreign service comprises professionals who know that it is inappropriate to break a country’s laws while lobbying,” the diplomat said. “The military people do not understand diplomatic norms or rules. They just want to advance the Kashmir cause or engage in anti-India activities, ignoring international law.”

Fair, the expert on Pakistan, was aware of Chaudhry’s activities long before his conviction, and had repeatedly reported him to the FBI, “Nisar Chaudhry frequently arranged meetings with influential Pakistan Military [officials] and he shopped these meetings around to various “think tanks.” United States Institute of Peace (USIP), happily hosted him and his entourages.” She had been invited to an event at the United States Institute of Peace by Chaudhry himself, who said he wanted to facilitate a rapprochement between her and the Pakistan army, in 2017 prior to his arrest.

Another curious case is that of Moeed Yusuf, the former Vice President for Asia at the USIP. Dr Fair had for many years been drawing attention to Yusuf’s role at the USIP, saying that he used the platform of the organisation to propagate a pro-Pakistan policy. According to Dr Fair, in programme documents written by Yusuf and his colleagues, the USIP took an overtly pro-Pakistan stance, leading to Fair reporting him to the FBI and U.S. House Oversight Committee under suspicions that he was working for the Pakistan government, only to be ignored. Fair’s concerns over Moeed Yusuf were confirmed with his recent appointment to the post of National Security Adviser to the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Pakistan’s Nexus with American Academia

The Pakistan government has also actively built a network of scholars, who they invite to Pakistan to present their research, or to show them their military operation sites. Dr. Fair told South Asia Press about a co-author she worked with being contacted by the Ministry of Information in Pakistan to write a book about the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war, for which he would be compensated and also be given access to important archival information. The government’s choice of person was very deliberate, in Fair’s opinion, since he is not an expert on Pakistan, and is eager to publish a book and be compensated for it and was thus, easily lured in by the loaded offer.

Pakistan also exerts a great deal of control over think tanks and military universities in the United States. The Middle East Institute has gone as far as to allegedly ban established academic critical of Pakistan like Dr. Fair, who is also excluded from activities of the National Defense University in Washington D.C.

Thomas F. Lynch, a research fellow at the National Defense University himself has stated in an interview that it is “undeniably true” that Pakistan does make a concerted effort to exclude certain voices, and that the National Defense University “may honour requests” made by the Pakistan government with regard to inviting speakers to the university.

Covert and Overt Lobbying by Pakistan – AGENDA: Kashmir

Other recent examples of individuals “influencing operations” secretly on behalf of Pakistani government and convicted under FARA include Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, a U.S. citizen who was funded by the ISI, and used his links to Capitol Hill to manipulate the narrative over Kashmir in Pakistan’s favour. He was the head of the Kashmir American Council which claimed to be an independent voice for Kashmiris funded by Americans to educate the U.S. about the Kashmiri peoples’ struggle. He was arrested by the FBI in 2011 and charged with secretly lobbying for Pakistan, and receiving over $400,000 in funding from the ISI. But Fai’s ability to infiltrate and influence US Congress members points towards a much larger problem of US democracy itself, and how illegal foreign money has found a place in US politics.

According to the retired diplomat in conversation with South Asia Press, “On several occasions, unlawful Pakistani influence operations have resulted in Pakistani agents being arrested by the FBI in the U.S. But that has not stopped the Pakistani military from continuing with its activities. People are dispensable when you embrace Jihad as your cause.”

Pakistan has also hired several paid lobbyists in the U.S., including Brown Lloyd James, a lobbying firm used by China, in the United States in an effort to influence the narrative over Kashmir and build support for Pakistan in Capitol Hill. Other lobbying firms have been hired for the same purpose, including Holland & Knight, which ex-Congressman Tom Reynolds was an important part of, along with other Capitol Hill veterans.

The US law allows for lobbying groups to function legally in the country, to work to influence their foreign policy, a seriously flawed system due to which, “virtually anyone can buy our democracy”, says Dr. Fair. “But this is our law. The best we can do is show light on its pernicious effects, which in the case of Pakistan has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans in Afghanistan.”