India informed the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) Counter Terrorism Committee (CTC) that there has been a steep rise in cross-border (militant) activities in Jammu Kashmir since the end of 2021, around the time when severe financial strictures by global terror-financing watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), were eased on a “troublesome jurisdiction”, as per a report by The Hindu.
Earlier this month, the FATF removed Pakistan from the “grey list” of countries under “increased monitoring”. India said to the panel that (militant) activities had seen a decline from 2018 to the end of 2021, during which time Pakistan was placed on the grey list.
As per the report, Safi Rizvi, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), on the first day of the UNSC committee’s meeting in Mumbai on October 28, informed that in mid-2018, there had been close to 600 (militant) camps across the JK border. This was the time when Pakistan was first placed on the grey list.
“The cross-border terror bases went down by 75% during the FATF listing. The Counter Terrorism Committee should notice how effective the U.N. designations and listings by the FATF are. The moment the talk started that the grey listing is about to end, the bases have gone up by 50% and we are expecting more scalable and more attacks on hard targets [security installations] and much more trouble,” Mr. Rizvi was quoted as saying in the report.
According to the presentation made before the committee, there were 600 (militant) camps across JK in mid-2018, which came down to 150 in the middle of 2021. From 2021 to September 2022, the number of (militant) bases sharply increased to 225.
He added that since end-2021, “the return of cross border (militancy) infrastructure and the return of attacks on Indian targets” is noticeable.
Mr. Rizvi said that the FATF listing of Pakistan from 2018-2022 saw relative peace.
Highlighting the importance of the U.N.’s designations, Mr. Rizvi said the designated (militants) were either arrested or convicted, and open militant activities such as collecting donations through appeals on social media and holding public rallies, were restricted. To substantiate, he shared a photograph of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed, a U.N. designated militant, holding a public rally in Pakistan in December 2017. The officer said after the U.N. designations were enforced by the FATF in 2018, the rallies stopped.
He added that during the grey list period, nine India-focussed U.N. designated militants had been convicted in Pakistan. He said Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar, who had close links with Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban, was convicted in absentia in 2019, although he has never been arrested.