Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, July 18: The United States’ branding as Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) “The Resistance Front,” (TRF), an arm of the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba and is believed to be the perpetrators of the April 22 massacre of tourists in Pahalgam and other terror attacks earlier, is a huge shot in the arm for Indian efforts to ensure that Pakistan is once again placed on the grey list of Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Sources say that the government has written yet another letter to FATF to consider this demand from India. Pakistan was delisted in 2022 and India has been making the case that the funds and aid which Pakistan gets from global financial institutions were used for terror activities.
In a rare act, the FATF had recently issued a statement condemning terror acts. The reason, it is believed, was that the international community has felt the severity of the attack and spotlights that such attacks will not go unpunished.
Being put on the grey list means the country cannot control money-laundering and terror-financing operations and is put under increased monitoring by FATF, an inter-governmental body. It restricts access to the international trade and financial system. The country can face difficulty in getting loans from multilateral organisations like International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Being on the FATF grey list is a warning to the countries to take corrective measures, failing which they will be moved to the stringent ‘FATF Black List.’
The FATF meeting is expected to take place in September-October. India has sent many letters and has also reached out to make the point that the funds and aid given in “good faith” were being misused by Pakistan. The money meant for the welfare and upliftment of the Pakistani people was not being used for the cause and was being diverted to fund terror organisations, which is something the world needs to wake up to and was in the interest of the global powers like the US to ensure that Pakistan was put in the grey list.
India has been reaching out to FATF members like Mexico, Argentina, Canada, Denmark through backdoor to push its case. With the US now putting the terror label, India can hope that its demand could be met.
Mr Rajesh Narwal, the father of the Indian Navy officer Lieutenant Vinay Narwal, one of the 26 victims of the Pahalgam terror attack, welcomed the US move but said symbolism was not enough. “The US government has taken this step, but it’s not something that happened overnight. The TRF was formed in 2019 when our government revoked Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. It is their mask. Terrorist organisations, whether in India or any corner of the world, are not finished just by sanctions.
“I believe that such organisations, whose ideology is to spread terrorism and harm society, must face more than sanctions. This should not be limited to our country or the US. Sanctions alone are not enough. When we see their photos and identify their ideology, their actions, and their funding sources, where the money comes from and which organisations support them, then we know who they are. They should be eradicated,” Rajesh Narwal said.
Lieutenant Vinay Narwal, aged 26, got married on April 16. Less than a week later, he was gunned down by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam. An image of Himanshi Narwal, his newly-wed wife, sitting next to his body became one of the defining images of one of the worst terror attacks in living memory. Today, Lt Narwal’s father, Rajesh, lives with a grief he describes as unrelenting, and one that, he says, Pakistan’s military chief General Asim Munir will only understand if “someone harms his son or daughter.”
“He (General Asim Munir) will only be able to understand my pain the day someone harms his son or daughter. The day he learns that his son or daughter was killed in a terrorist attack, only then will he understand the pain. If I, an ordinary person, were given a gun to shoot and took his son or daughter, then he would know the pain,” the grieved father said.