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Friday March 29, 2024

Climbing out of the FATF hole

By Shahzad Chaudhry
March 02, 2018

How we got there should be better known. Briefly, we spurned the Soviets by choosing the US over them in 1950, drawing a line and living with the consequences. Afghanistan, an alternatively British or Soviet Protectorate became a contextual victim yet again.

The Soviet shadow over Afghanistan loomed large despite Afghan claims to neutrality. This turned Afghanistan into an undeclared Soviet ally even as the world used it as a buffer against Soviet expansionism. When this got threatened in 1979 by the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Americans moved in physically to deny a further breach. A host of venomous possibilities kept Pakistan occupied too. The Indians in Afghanistan today pose a similar challenge and a new front.

To keep a close eye on what brewed in Afghanistan, Pakistan first created an Afghan Desk in the ISI under Ayub Khan. The desk changed to a cell under ZAB who was not only wary of the western borders, he also had to contend with separatism in Balochistan encouraged by those who found state patronage and refuge in Afghanistan. And then when the Soviets breached Afghanistan’s proclaimed neutrality in 1979, Pakistan upgraded the cell to a full-fledged directorate with independent operational capability. It became the one-window stop for the Americans and the CIA to pursue business together with Pakistan in Afghanistan. These were the times of Ziaul Haq.

Subsequently, and since things have gone south with the Americans now in occupation and calling the shots, Pakistan has had to recalibrate and downgrade the organisational and structural intensity of its intelligence operations. This has included the gradual waning of an active kinetic involvement even as Pakistan keeps a keen vigil with newer state and non-state threats to it from Afghan soil. Last week’s framing of Pakistan at the FATF plenary in Paris as a country under-watch is a consequence of how the region around Pakistan has evolved in the last decade.

From being the most allied non-Nato ally to now finding mention among nations accused of financing and thus bolstering international terrorism is a slide which is difficult to digest despite Pakistan’s overt claim to strategic interests in Afghanistan and its long engagement there. A nation that has over the years withstood the presence of two superpowers in its neighbourhood, which has suffered deep internal strife based around religion, which has faced and defeated the consequences of having first blunted and then fought two wars against declared and mostly undeclared enemies and groups challenging Pakistan’s stability as a nation, and has survived the consequences of it all in social and economic mauling, is now being framed for not having done enough.

The truth is – and it is painful – it may have done enough but hasn’t done all. And while Pakistan may have a list of cogent arguments for why it did not, it has left a window open for some in the world to show the country in a bad light. But then that is what those in the world with influence think and that is what Pakistan must contend with – being ostracised in an interdependent world and being separated from the economic and financial grid. This even as a most ominous economic future, around a distorted domestic economy stares Pakistan in the face. Without recourse to international financial help, the country will have little options to fend off this debilitation while the negative characterisation particularly makes it difficult to realise required support to achieve buoyancy.

Fighting off such strangulation will need a total reorientation of how we as a state and society function. In a very impoverished socio-political economy, this seems far-fetched in an election year that is likely to be even more fractious and contentious. Going back to UNSC Resolution 1267, and a host of legislative and procedural measures flowing from it, a blueprint of actions must be developed to stem money-laundering and terror-funding in order to escape the looming dragnet. That shouldn’t be too difficult. The committee tasked under Nacta with this responsibility remains listless, ill-equipped and unimpressive to push the remaining reform and implementation process. This must be raised to the right level to be noticed and wring the necessary changes.

But the US wasn’t insistent on framing Pakistan because of complaints by some regional neighbours of its looser financial controls, or because India continues to be haunted by groups like the JuD or its charity affiliate, the FIF, or others who get under India’s skin because of their influence in IOK. These may be incidental conveniences but what seemingly piqued America was how Pakistan rebuffed most American allegations of covert support to Afghan groups with its comparatively better conduct of the war, pointing instead to the US’ rather dismal conduct in comparison. And there is enough independent observation around to testify American plight, but coming from Pakistan – which the US had assumed was a pliant associate – this perhaps was judged imperious.

The fact that Pakistan would not agree to openly taking on the Haqqanis – the US and Afghanistan’s nemesis within the larger Taliban network – for reasons which seem greatly more rational in the face of American arm-twisting, has meant that America will, well, twist arms. The usual diplomatic options of stopping aid and the whole works, short of sanctions, not really finding traction meant that the US would now use the pressure of international obligations and mechanisms under an established forum like the FATF. That some of Pakistan’s noted allies like China and Saudi Arabia held off any resistance meant that there was consensus among them to let some heat be felt by Pakistan into responding more vigorously. Corollary: will such precedence lead to wider sanctions blacklisting Pakistan? And can Pakistan stem such decadence with remedial steps in its own favour?

Pakistan should have done this on its own. Now it will be seen to be responding to international pressures or isolation. This can sully an already smeared image while jading Pakistan’s acute sensitivity even further. The Haqqanis for long now have their own space inside Afghanistan but Pakistan has been unable to say so with conviction. If indeed there are gaps in this belief we need to be on the right side of both history and the process. Others too need to assume their part of the responsibility to realise peace. Only if the US genuinely desires peace and does not have countervailing objectives, and Afghanistan can create an environment for peace, will the feuding Afghans begin to believe their stated intent.

The JuD and the FIF must be brought under financial controls in pursuance of obligations under UNSCR 1267, without an exception. On their legal status or strategic interplay of Pakistan’s vital interests there is a need for a sustaining dialogue between nations. Pakistan must also proactively engage with the world on these issues. That needs a functional government which in an election year is the unlikeliest. Our predicament thus may be long even as Pakistan struggles to prove itself as not the blighted nation it is made to be. It is time too for the world to give a listening ear to Pakistan; and for Pakistan to begin talking to the world.

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com