Pakistan’s Shields Suddenly Step Aside
Placing It on Terrorism Listing
By MARIA ABI-HABIB and SALMAN MASOOD MARCH 1, 2018
NEW
DELHI — During the debate last week over a United States-sponsored measure to throw
Pakistan onto a global terrorism-financing watchlist, it appeared that Saudi
Arabia and China were going to quickly shut it all down. The Pakistani foreign
minister sounded a triumphant note.
“Grateful to friends who helped,” Foreign Minister Khawaja M.
Asif posted on Twitter.
Just two days later, on Friday, Pakistan’s relief turned to
alarm at the news that those two close allies had withdrawn their support,
making it inevitable that Pakistan would be added in June to the “gray list” of
the Financial Action Task Force, a global body created to fight terrorism
financing and money laundering.
The country will have a year to show that it is acting against
extremist groups, shutting down their financing streams and prosecuting their
leaders, or it could face having its banks cut off like those of Iran and North
Korea were. Already, the grey-listing will make it harder for Pakistan to
access international markets, and it has $3 billion in debts coming due this
summer.
Pakistan has been on that grey list before, for a three-year
stretch that ended in 2015, and this week Pakistani officials publicly
expressed doubt that anything worse would happen.
But by all accounts, the new international action was an
embarrassing public slap that has again focused discussion on the Pakistani
military’s benign eye toward militant groups working against American aims in
Afghanistan and Indian interests in Kashmir.
Further,
the shock over Saudi Arabia’s and China’s eventual refusal to block action against
Pakistan has made this listing sting in a way the last one never did.
“The listing this time seems serious,” said Arifa Noor, a
political commentator and talk show host. “The uneasy relationship between
Islamabad and Washington, and the public pressure by the White House, has also
added to the sense of seriousness and worry. The issue didn’t get so much
attention in 2012.”
The Trump administration’s increased pressure on Pakistan,
including cutting off $1.3 billion in aid in January, is
rooted in frustration over what officials have said is the country’s refusal to
act against a Taliban insurgency that is wrecking Afghanistan even as it finds
support in Pakistan.
But the recent gray-listing is explicitly focused on two groups
that the United States says are linked to terrorism against India The groups,
Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniyat — suspected of being fronts for
Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group accused in the 2008 Mumbai attacks — operated openly
until the Pakistani government officially outlawed
them in February, barely a week before the international community
met to determine whether to list Islamabad.
Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal insisted that Pakistan was already
cracking down on the organizations linked to Lashka-e-Taiba. And other
officials pointed out that Pakistani officials say that since they outlawed the
two groups last month, they have seized their ambulances, schools and other
assets.
But American officials aren’t convinced, pointing to past
actions Pakistan has taken against terrorist groups to placate the
international community, only to later allow them to raise money and preach
hatred.
“Concerns remain, even as Pakistan has recently begun to take
action,” said David J. Ranz, the acting deputy assistant secretary of state for
Pakistan, in a telephone interview. “The international community has
consistently expressed its longstanding concerns about ongoing deficiencies in
Pakistan’s implementation of its anti-money laundering and counterterrorism
finance regime.”
That two of Pakistan’s strongest allies could join, or at least
accept, American efforts to isolate the country has roiled the government in
Islamabad and the military.
Saudi
Arabia and China have consistently blocked international actions to penalize
Pakistan, with Beijing consistently using its veto at the United Nations. Just
last month, Pakistan sent troops to Saudi Arabia to help train and advise the
Saudi army, which has been locked in a long war in Yemen.
And Beijing is spending some $60 billion in joint infrastructure
and development projects in Pakistan, which will also bolster China’s efforts
to spread its influence in South Asia while providing thousands of jobs to
Chinese workers.
As the Trump administration has ratcheted up pressure over the
last year, two camps have become apparent within Pakistan: those urging that
Islamabad sever ties with militant groups and repair relations with Washington,
and those who say that the alliance with China is enough to weather a fallout
with the West.
That pro-China camp has consistently scoffed at Washington’s
threats, pointing to the tens of billions of dollars that Islamabad has
received from Beijing, dwarfing American assistance. But last week’s vote
undermined that stance, at least for the moment.
Pakistani officials say China dropped its objection to
Islamabad’s listing last week as Beijing lobbied for the vice chairmanship of
the Financial Action Task Force. Beijing was granted that post on Friday, after
the decision to list Pakistan.
Although Pakistani officials say they are disappointed about
China and Saudi Arabia’s lack of support, they are confident it is a one-off.
Beijing wouldn’t want to risk its development projects in Pakistan while Riyadh
needs the country’s support for the war in Yemen and other regional objectives,
they argue.
But the sense of embarrassment over the gray listing was
palpable.
Editorials in prominent Pakistani newspapers embarked on some
soul-searching, asking why the country’s military — and to some extent,
politicians — refuse to crack down on groups the international community has
blacklisted.
An editorial on Sunday in the newspaper The Nation asked
why Pakistan had “to force our allies, like China and Saudi Arabia, in such an
uncomfortable position to defend Pakistan every time.” It added, “The
mainstreaming of terrorist and extremist factions, to the point that we
tolerated their large participation in our election process, is what has put us
in this situation today.”
But the contemplation was largely relegated to the liberal
columnists that have asked this question before: Is it worth it for Pakistan to
support these groups as a foreign policy tool, and risk international
isolation?
“Is this a watershed moment, or is this more of the same?” said
Cyril Almeida, a columnist for the English-language newspaper Dawn, in a
telephone interview.
Mr. Almeida, like others, is skeptical that Washington’s hawkish
approach will change Pakistan’s support to militant groups.
“There’s a domestic struggle going on, and international
pressure focused on same issue: How does Pakistan remain a part of the regional
or global system while having a tolerance for militant groups?” he said. “And
what does Pakistan do about these groups? No one will say how this will end,
either domestic struggle or Pakistan’s place internationally.”
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