Pak hires top lobby firm for bailout
Ahead of the October 21-23 plenary and subgroups meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Pakistan is understood to have hired a top lobbying firm on Capitol Hill to push a narrative favouring Islamabad with the Trump administration and get bailed out of the club of nations on the grey list of the anti-terror financing watchdog.
With its all-weather ally and iron brother China, Ottoman empire revivalist Turkey and increasingly radicalized Malaysia behind Pakistan, there is no possibility of Islamabad getting pushed into FATF’s black list -only three out of 39 memberstates are required to block the proposal. Islamabad, however, requires support of at least 12 out of 39 member states to remove its name from the grey ;ist and this will largely depend on the approach the US will take at the Paris plenary.
According to diplomats based in the US and Paris, the Pakistan foreign ministry has hired Houston, Texas-based lobbying firm Linden Strategies to push its case with the Trump administration.
The firm’s website describes it as a “government relations and business development firm providing strategic analysis and advisory to domestic and international clients, including sovereign nations.”
Security forces during an encounter with terrorists at Sopore on April 8, in which a JeM commander was killed.
The firm’s specialization is in government relations, strategic communication, business advisory and political consulting with clients spanning the globe.
Apparently, the narrative Pakistan wants the firm to communicate to the Trump administration is as follows :
• Main leadership of the Taliban, Haqqani Network (HN), al-Qaida and Daesh global terrorist groups is based in Afghanistan with access to sufficient funds. This means that Islamabad has disavowed that the Taliban shura and HN operate from Quetta, across the Bolan Pass, and Peshawar, across the Khyber Pass, and there is no hand of Pakistan’s deep state in al-Qaida and Daesh, or so-called Islamic State, in Afghanistan.
Fact is that HN chief Sirajiuddin Haqqani is the sword arm of
Taliban as its deputy leader ,with Maulvi Hibatullah Akhunzada being a cleric.
• While Pakistan claims that Muridke-based Lashkar-e-Tayebba (LeT) remains defunct, terror financing cases have been registered against most of the identified leaders of Jamaat-udDawa and Fala-e-Insaniyat foundation. Fact is that LeT’s Emir Hafiz Saeed, the main accused in 26/11 Mumbai attacks, has handed over the reins of the proscribed group to son Talha, who is instigating terror violence and in touch with sleeper cells across the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir.
• The Imran Khan government claims that the Bahawalpur-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group follows a unique Afghan war-based model of operation. While its key leaders are not in Pakistan, the group is operating through its sympathizers. Fact is that JeM’s emir Masood Azhar has a serious medical condition and is bed-ridden in Bahawalpur. His brother Mufti Rauf Asghar now operates the group with training camps both in Pakistan as well as across the Durand Line in Afghanistan. JeM’s main operator in Kashmir is Kasim Jan, the 2016 Pathankot attack accused, who gets instruction from Asghar. JeM is a family enterprise with terrorism as its main product.
• Pakistan claims that it has successfully convicted four designated persons and two other senior leaders. Terror financing cases have been instituted against 11 designated persons (61 cases) and eight other leaders (37 cases).
Fact is that according to FATF’s 2019 mutual evaluation report, there were 66 organizations and approximately 7,600 individuals proscribed under the UN Security Council resolution 1373, which was passed to prevent and suppress financing of terror acts post the 9/11 attacks.
Despite hiring a top lobbying firm and offering its leverage with Taliban to the US for reduction of violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan will not be able to escape the grey list this time as its 2019 Mutual Evaluation Report leaves a lot to be desired and it is still to comply with all the 27 points of the FATF action plan of the past.