Pakistan’s
Crackdown on Terror Financing, all For Show?
Pakistan’s government appears to crack down on financing for proscribed
groups, but will the policy make a difference?
By Umer Ali October 18, 2016
In a major move, which for some is a
quite familiar one, the State Bank of Pakistan directed all banks across the
country to freeze the accounts of 2,021 individuals listed in the Fourth
Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act. Formulated in 1997, the Anti-Terrorism Act
allows the government to list individuals such that they are required to seek
police permission to enter an area, empowering law enforcement agencies to
observe their movements, among other things.
“All banks, development finance
institutions, and microfinance banks have been advised to take immediate action
as per requirement of the law against individuals, whose names are included in
the lists of fourth schedulers provided by the National Counter-Terrorism
Authority (NACTA),” a State Bank of Pakistan source told Dawn.
The list is dominated by
representatives and leaders of various sectarian outfits, including
well-known names like Ahmed Ludhianvi of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), Aurangzeb
Farooqi of ASWJ, Mullah Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid, and Ramzan Mengal of
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Interestingly, however, there is no
mention of any office-bearer of Kashmir-related groups like Jamat-ud-Dawa
(JuD), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), or Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM).
In Pakistan, many see this move with
suspicion, referring to similar steps in the past that turned out to be
highly ineffective.
For example when, for the first time
ever, Pervez Musharraf banned jihadi outfits fighting in Kashmir and
Afghanistan, declaring his support for the U.S.-led war against terror. Even
then, these groups changed their names and continued to operate like before.
Owais Tohid, a veteran journalist who
covered these groups for a decade, reported the same in his December 2003 piece
for Newsline Magazine. Titled “And the Jihad goes on,” the piece
explored the ways through which the banned groups continued their activities.
“Prominent leaders like Masood Azhar,
chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad, and Maulana Fazl-ur Rehman Khalil, head of the
banned Harkatul Mujahideen, issued statements in the Punjab, delivered
addresses urging participants to come forward for jihad,” Tohid wrote.
In his now 13-year-old report, he
discovered, “About 600 leaders and members of the banned groups have been asked
to furnish surety bonds of good conduct, involving surety money of 100,000
rupees.”
He further reported that thousands of
copies of jihadi newspapers and magazines were being sold on a daily basis.
Thirteen years on, Pakistan is
still struggling to put effective curbs on the very same outfits.
In a 2015 article published by the
Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS), Safiya Aftab observed:
An important Counter Terrorism
activity is denting the militant economy, through all possible ways: tracing
the financial mechanisms of funding used by militants, neutralizing those
sources, and preventing banned outfits from raising funds domestically or
internationally.
She continued, “This element has
received relatively little attention in Pakistan, for a variety of reasons like
general lack of expertise in financial crime, and lack of appreciation of the
intricacies of the militant economy.”
Amir Rana, the director of PIPS,
believes that most of these groups generate funds through bank robberies,
smuggling, and kidnapping for ransom. Commenting on why the State Bank of
Pakistan’s move might not be effective, he says, “While the heads of many
sectarian groups have been included in the list, it’s a given fact that their
bank accounts wouldn’t have much of the money being generated through different
means.”
“These groups hold several other
accounts, through which large transactions are processed. Banning just the
official accounts is not going to change anything.”
Senior journalist Azaz Syed, who
works with Geo News, agrees that freezing the official bank
accounts of selected individuals won’t change much. “Around 80 percent of
their money comes through illegal means and it never reaches the bank
accounts,” he says.
“This might just be a mere eyewash
because most of their transactions are made in cash, hence there is no point
freezing their bank accounts.”
Syed broke the news of the National
Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), which suspended the citizenship of 2,021 suspects linked
with militant and sectarian groups last week.
“Prominent names on the list whose
identity cards have been blocked include those of religious personalities
including Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat leader Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, Lal
Masjid (Red Mosque) cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, Majlis-e-Wahdat-e-Muslimeen
leader Allama Maqsood Ali Domki, and Mohsin Najfi,” he reported.
While the move received significant
praise from certain quarters who deemed it a necessary step in the right
direction, many human rights activists, lawyers, and journalists declared it to
be a grave violation of basic human rights.
Azaz Syed himself takes the same
view. “Instead of acting against the hardened terrorists, government is
suspending the citizenships of many individuals on the basis of mere suspicion,”
he says.
He added, “There is no court order to
suspend their citizenship as well, which makes the order even more
questionable.”
Syed further says that the absence of
Kashmir-linked jihadi groups is big point of ambiguity on the supposed
shift in state’s counterterror paradigm.
In an explosive scoop last week, Dawn’s
senior staffer Cyril Almeida revealed a serious confrontation between
civil-military leadership in a recent, undisclosed meeting.
Asking the military to act
effectively against terrorists of all hues, the civilian government reportedly
warned that Pakistan would face international isolation otherwise.
The highlight of this meeting, as
reported by Almeida, was the “stunning and unexpectedly bold intervention” by
Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif who blasted the director general of
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt. General Rizwan Akhtar, by
saying that whenever his government acted against certain militants, ISI worked
behind the scenes to set them free.
The exchange corroborated this writer’s report for The Diplomat, in which senior
civilian security official lamented the military’s intervention when Punjab’s
Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) raided JeM strongholds.
Almeida further reported that DG ISI
Rizwan Akhtar would now visit all four provinces accompanied by the National
Security Advisor Naseer Khan Janjua to meet the apex committees, as well as ISI
sector commanders.
The message of these meetings, one of
which Almeida claimed already took place in Lahore, is that military-led
intelligence agencies are not to interfere if law enforcement acts against
militant groups that are banned or until now considered off-limits for civilian
action.
After a suicide attack killed over
hundred people on Easter eve this March, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered
the immediate arrest of suspects on the Fourth Schedule list. However, this
wasn’t followed up and the news died out.
Earlier in 2015, a month after the
horrible Army Public School attack in Peshawar in late-2014 that killed scores
of children, Pakistan announced the freezing of JuD bank accounts. The
announcement coincided with the visit of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry,
who appreciated the move.
A document acquired by Dawn confirmed the
proscribing of Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Falah-i-Insaniat
Foundation, Ummah Tameer-i-Nau, Haji Khairullah Hajji Sattar Money Exchange,
Rahat Limited, Roshan Money Exchange, Al Akhtar Trust, Al Rashid Trust, the
Haqqani network, and Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
However, in recent months, JuD’s
activities have only increased, with its charity wing, Falah-i-Insaniyat
Foundation (FIF), expanding its “relief operations” to the rural areas of Sindh
and Balochistan.
JuD is not the only group operating
freely inside Pakistan, despite several claims by the government. In the month
of Ramzan (Ramadan), Jaish-e-Mohammad’s charity wing, Al-Rehmat trust, openly
collected donations outside mosques in Karachi, often in the presence of
Pakistan Rangers personnel.
The Al-Rashid Trust, which is
notoriously known for its terror network in Pakistan and Afghanistan, was also
banned twice by the government. It changed its name to the Al-Ameen Trust and
resumed its operations throughout the country. Even today, it’s operating
freely under the name of the Maymar Trust.
Despite this history of deliberate
inefficiency by the government, Fahd Hamayun, the program and research
manager at Pakistan’s Jinnah Institute, believes the recent moves to be a good
step forward. “This is a step in the right direction and should necessitate
some level of parliamentary oversight to ensure effective implementation.
Turning off the taps on terrorism financing is essential if the government is
keen to demonstrate its commitment to the National Action Plan,” he says.
Criticizing the reluctance of the
government to update the Fourth Schedule list, he adds, “So far the Interior
Ministry’s reluctance to update its list of proscribed organizations is
indicative of state lethargy in putting a blanket ban on all terror groups.”
In the end, this move will either
turn out to just be for show or will actually show results – only time will
tell what the government of Pakistan has planned to finally put an end to the
operations of banned militant and sectarian groups in the country.
Umer Ali is a freelance journalist
based in Pakistan. He covers human rights, social issues, terrorism and more.
He can be reached on Twitter at @iamumer1
Shahid Afzal Khan also contributed in
the research of this story.
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