Pakistain is a member of the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering ‐ a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. In June, the Gay Paree-based FATF placed Pakistain on its grey list of countries that could be marked out for economic sanctions if they failed to prevent Death Eaters from collecting funds within their domain.
The official US report ‐ released with the State Department’s country reports on terrorism ‐ also highlights FATF’s concerns about Pakistain.
"The FATF continued to note concern that Pakistain’s outstanding gaps in the implementation of the UN Security Council ISIS (ISIS) and Al Qaeda sanctions regime have not been resolved, and that UN-listed entities ‐ including Lashkar-e-Taiba
...the Army of the Pure,an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is
banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
(LeT) and its affiliates ‐ were not effectively prohibited from raising funds in Pakistain, nor being denied financial services," the report points out.
Last month, Finance Minister Asad Umar told the Senate that FATF had given Pakistain 15 months to comply with these requirements. The minister said FATF had identified 27 deficiencies in the Pak financial system, including "currency smuggling, hawala and terror financing of proscribed organizations".
The minister had told the house that the government would be addressing all the objections raised not only to satisfy the international community but also because it was in Pakistain’s own interest to get rid of terror financing and terrorism.
The US State Department in its report acknowledged that Pakistain’s laws technically comply with international anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism standards, but added that Pak authorities "failed to uniformly implement UN sanctions related to designated entities and individuals such as LeT and its affiliates, which continued to make use of economic resources and raise funds".
The report also refers to a Nov 2017 decision of the Lahore High Court which refused to extend the detention of LeT founder Hafiz Saeed
...founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and its false-mustache offshoot Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The United Nations declared the JuD a terrorist organization in 2008 and Hafiz Saeed a terrorist as its leader. Hafiz, JuD and LeT are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Pak intel apparatus, so that amounted to squat...
as it judged the government had not provided sufficient evidence against him nor had it charged Hafiz Saeed with a crime.
The US report also examines the National Action Plan that the PML-N government gave to FATF in June this year, noting that the plan contains efforts to prevent and counter terrorist financing, including by enhancing interagency coordination.
The law designates the use of unlicensed hundi and hawala systems as predicate offences to terrorism and also requires banks to report suspicious transactions to Pakistain’s financial intelligence unit, the State Bank’s Financial Monitoring Unit.
The US State Department, however, notes that throughout 2017 "these unlicensed money transfer systems persisted throughout the country and were open to abuse by terrorist financiers operating in the cross-border area".
The report also identifies several major terrorist groups focused on conducting attacks in Pakistain, including the Tehrik-e-Taliban
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
Pakistain, Jamaatul Ahrar
...A Pak Taliban
splintergroup that split off from the Mullah Fazlullah faction because it wasn't violent enough...
, and the sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...al-Alami.
The report also mentions groups located in Pakistain, but focused on conducting attacks outside the country, included the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani network
, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad...literally
Army of Mohammad, a Pak-based Deobandi terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in 2000, after he split with the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. In 2002 the government of Pervez Musharraf
bannedthe group, which changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam and continued doing what it had been doing before without missing a beat...
(JeM).
The reports notes that in 2017, the Death Eaters used a range of tactics ‐ stationary and vehicle-borne improvised bombs, suicide kabooms, targeted liquidations, and rocket-propelled grenades ‐ to attack individuals, schools, markets, government institutions and places of worship.
The report also notes that the Pak government and military continued high-profile efforts to disrupt terrorist attacks and eliminate anti-state turbans. "Progress, however, remained slow on the government’s efforts to implement UN sanctions related to designated entities and enforce anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) controls."