Trump administration is hardening its approach towards Pakistan in a determined bid to force its long time ally to crack down on militants launching strikes in Afghanistan. As a part of this strategy, Washington has decided not to disbuse $350 million due to Pakistan under CSF
Also amidst reports that Pakistan has not put brakes on financing terrorist groups.The United States has finally begun to force Pakistan for not acting against the Haqqani Network. It has decided against disbursement of $350 million in coalition support fund (CSF). The Defence Secretary James Mattis notified Congress that he was not able to certify that Islamabad has taken “sufficient actions” against the dreaded Haqqani network.
Pakistan is the largest recipient of CSF reimbursements, having received more than $14 billion since 2002. The CSF is not security assistance. It is reimbursements of money spent on logistical, military and other support provided to US combat operations.
This is not the first time the Pentagon has decided not to make military reimbursements though. Last year, the Pentagon withheld $300 million in reimbursements.
But the significance of the latest action is that it comes against the backdrop of reports that Trump administration has been hardening its approach toward Pakistan to crack down on militants launching strikes in Afghanistan. Also amidst reports that Pakistan has not put brakes on financing terrorist groups.
Over the past two-three decade the US officials were frustrated by “Islamabad’s unwillingness to act against Islamist groups” such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network.
Pakistan-based Haqqani network has carried out a number of high-profile attacks on US and Western interests in war-torn Afghanistan. It also made several deadly attacks against Indian interests in Afghanistan. Its 2008 bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul killed 58 people.
Only early this week, the State Department in a report to the Congress had listed Pakistan as one of the countries having terrorist safe havens. The report, titled “Country Reports on Terrorism, 2016”, was sent as part of its annual assessment of terrorism across the world. It acknowledges that violent terrorist attacks inside Pakistan have continued to decline but blames Islamabad for failing to prevent cross-border attacks.
In a separate chapter on money laundering, the report castigates that Pakistan has failed to check terror financing. It points out that “there has not been a significant number of prosecutions or convictions of terrorist financing cases reported by Pakistan in recent years”.
Pakistan is a member of the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering, a regional body modelled on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). FATF is an intergovernmental organisation founded in 1989 to develop policies to combat money laundering. In 2001, it expanded its mandate to act on terrorism financing.
In October 2016, FATF noted “concern among members that Pakistan’s outstanding gaps in the implementation of the UN Security Council ISIL [the militant Islamic State group] and Al Qaeda sanctions regime had not been resolved, and that UN-listed entities — including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its branches — were not being effectively prohibited from raising funds in Pakistan”.
Despite Pakistan’s CFT (Combating Financing of Terrorism) laws, “LeT and its wings continued to make use of economic resources and raise funds in the country in 2016. Pakistan’s ban on media coverage also did not appear to reduce the ability of LeT to collect donations”.
Against this backdrop, doubts persist whether Pakistan is keen to see peace in Afghanistan.
Pakistan created terror groups such as the Taliban, the Haqqani network and the Lashkar-e-Taiba to keep India “off balance” and protect Islamabad’s interests in war-torn Afghanistan, Cipher Brief- online intelligence news and analysis portal said quoting former US diplomats and officials.
The portal has carried interviews and opinion pieces deciphering the “double game” of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
William Milam, a former US ambassador to Pakistan, and Philip Reiner, a former senior director for South Asia at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, said Pakistan’s notorious spy agency, the ISI, continues to protect and assist these groups.
Milam was US ambassador to Pakistan from 1998 until 2001.
He told the Cipher Brief that Pakistan feels keenly the need for a proxy to protect its interests there.
“We know that Pakistan was present at the creation of the Taliban in the mid-1990s and gave them much support in their fight to take over the country. And we know that the Haqqani network, which is allied with the Afghan Taliban, has become a good substitute proxy,” he said.
“As for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, it is a reminder that Pakistan still sees India as its primary existential threat and still relies on proxies to keep India off balance”, he said.
“A virulently anti-Indian extremist organisation, Lashkar-e-Taiba serves as one proxy. Inside India, in the last several years, it has carried out very serious raids which appear to have had ISI help,” Milam said.
According to The Cipher Brief, despite denials from senior Pakistani officials, many experts agree that the ISI continues to protect and assist the three US-designated terrorist groups, as part of its strategy to keep Afghanistan unstable and advance its ambitions in the Kashmir region.
Philip Reiner, a former senior director for South Asia at the National Security Council, avers that ISI’s role over time has included brutal suppression of anti-state rhetoric, fomenting insurgency, providing illicit channels for drug smuggling, acquiring nuclear weapons components, and developing proxy outfits to splinter domestic political parties.
“The primary argument made by Pakistani Generals is that due to historic and growing disparities with India in the conventional military balance, these proxy groups are essential for keeping India off-balance, as well as for ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a Western-aligned and India-dominated neighbour encircling the Pakistanis,” he wrote in an Op-ed for the porta.
According to him, since 9/11, the ISI has assisted in taking down a number of al-Qaeda leaders, but it has at the same time allowed safe passage for other terrorists, permitting India-focused terror groups to remain active, and ensuring that the Afghan Taliban could regroup and become a more effective and equipped fighting force than ever before.
“The US has found Pakistan to be a partner and an adversary at the same time,” the former White House official said.
“Pakistan’s double game is clearly illustrated by the ISI and its role,” Reiner said.
According to Bennett Seftel, the deputy director of analysis at the online portal, the ISI exerts a strong grip on Pakistan’s national security apparatus. It pulls strings behind the scenes to dominate Pakistani’s foreign and domestic policies.
“Many Americans are wary of the ISI, accusing it of providing safe havens to the Haqqani network and Taliban, which are responsible for many US and allied deaths in Afghanistan,” Seftel said.
-POREG TEAM