Jaishankar blasts Pak; says global fight against terror and its supporters is a ‘work in progress’

New Delhi: At a time when possibilities of actions from anti-terror watchdog, Financial Action Task Force (FATF), has unnerved Pakistan, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar has blasted Islamabad for its efforts to present itself as a ‘victim of terrorism and said the global fight against terror menace and “those who aid and abet” is a work in progress.

Dr Jaishankar said sustained international pressure “has eventually compelled” a state (read Pakistan) complicit in aiding, abetting, training and directing terror groups and associated criminal syndicates to grudgingly acknowledge the presence of wanted terrorists.

“States (read countries) that have turned the production of terrorists into a primary export have attempted, by dint of bland denials, to paint themselves as victims of terror,” he said without naming Pakistan while addressing the 19th Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture here on Friday. “The struggle against terror and those who aid and abet it is a work in progress,” he said and laid clear emphasis that -“It remains for the international system to create the necessary mechanisms to shut down the structures that support and enable terrorism, whether in South Asia or across the globe”.

Dr Jaishankar also gave a clarion call for evolving a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.

“Nineteen years from the tragedy of ‘9/11’ and 12 years from our own ‘26/11’, we have a range of mechanisms in place to contend with terrorism. These include the Financial Action Task Force, various UN Sanctions Committees and the Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate. But we still lack a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, with the membership of the UN still wrestling with certain foundational principles,” he pointed out.

But he also said it was experienced “last week” that sustained pressure through international mechanisms to prevent the movement of funds for terror groups and their front agencies can work. This was also in reference to Pakistan as last week Islamabad ame out with a ‘Statutory Regulatory Order’ (SRO) mentioning the names of around 80 terrorists including Dawood Ibrahim, Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed and Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar. The move of the Pakistani authorities only betrays the predicament they find themselves over the issue of terror and terror funding and Islamabad perhaps pretendedly want to escape blacklisting of the country by the FATF.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has already warned that if Pakistan is blacklisted at the FATF then Pakistan’s economy will be destroyed due to inflation. Speaking to a private news channel, Khan has said, “It will impact the Pakistani Rupee and when the Rupee starts to fall, we do not know how much it will fall. We do not have foreign reserves to save the Rupee ……Our entire economy will be destroyed due to inflation.”

MEA spokesman Anurag Srivastava on Thursday (and as reported in ‘Organiser) had said that “Pakistan has never taken any credible and verifiable action against terror entities or listed individuals, including the most wanted ones”.(https://www.organiser.org/wp-content/uploads/Encyc/2020/8/28/India-flays-Pak-on-Dawood-flip-flop-and-demands-actions-against-terrorists.html) The Minister also said, the true challenges at the global stage are more phenomena like terrorism, pandemics and climate change. “These are the issues that will really test the seriousness of multilateralism”.

But he said, unfortunately, there are some who persuade themselves that they can draw the benefits “while leaving the risks, threats, and challenges for others to deal with”. “This is predicated upon a false confidence that such problems can be localized in some regions of the planet, while others stay free from such contagion. As we have seen, this is not possible”

“If it took a heinous attack using passenger aircraft (9/11) as weapons of mass destruction to underscore the age of terror, it has similarly taken a lethally contagious virus to trigger a pandemic that has brought the world to its knees,” he said in reference to Covid19.