As reported by DNA, Pakistan has submitted a comprehensive action plan to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to stifle the funding of militants groups, including Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led JuD and its affiliates, to avoid being blacklisted by it.
Pakistan fears that being added to a list of countries deemed non-compliant with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations by the FATF, its strained economy would suffer a further blow. FATF, an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to deal with issues like money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system has already placed Pakistan on it’s ‘Grey List’.
Quoting sources in the Ministry of Finance, the report said that Pakistan plans to conceptualize choking the financing of terrorist groups like Da’esh (ISIS), Al Qaeda, Jamaat-ud Dawa and its affiliates Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the Haqqani Network and persons affiliated with the Taliban, all responsible for mass destruction around the world.
The report revealed that if the FAFT endorses the 26-point Action Plan, it will formally place Pakistan on the grey list, otherwise if rejected Pakistan would fall under its ‘Blacklist’. Pakistan will have to deliver on the first goal by January next year and complete all the 26 actions by September 2019.
Unfortunately, Pakistan has a history of retracting from its commitments. The world, and India, in particular, has witnessed this fraudulence umpteen number of times. Pakistan has violated the ceasefire along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir more than 720 times this year, the highest in past seven years. The horrifying figure represents a 230 per cent rise compared to 2016 – it is also the highest count in over a decade.
In 2016, there were 449 incidents of ceasefire violations in which 13 civilians and 13 security personnel were killed and 83 civilians and 99 security personnel were injured. Similarly, In 2014, there were 583 incidents of ceasefire violation in which 14 civilians and three security personnel were killed and 101 civilians and 28 security personnel were injured. In 2015, the number of ceasefire violations was 405, 347 in 2013, 114 in 2012, 62 in 2011 and 70 in 2010.
As years progress the unrest is constantly escalating, owing to the unscrupulousness Pakistan exhibits. Last month Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Uri sector in Jammu and Kashmir by opening fire. Officials from the Indian Army have time and again specified that Pakistan often violates the ceasefire norms with an intention to push in more terrorists to Jammu and Kashmir.
Incessant ceasefire violations by Pakistan have completely derailed the lives of the locals dwelling in the border area, leaving India with no option but to retaliate.
As it’s rightly said, ‘habits die hard’, and Pakistan nurturing the predisposition of abstaining from the commitments it makes, we are left with no option but to believe that this time too, Pakistan will definitely live up to our expectations, and fail to deliver what it has been lately promising, that is ‘curb the funding of terrorist groups’.
