Pak has safe terror havens: US ‘Report vindicate India’s position’

Washington, July 19: The United States on Wednesday listed Pakistan among the nations and regions providing “safe havens” to terrorists, saying terror groups like the LeT and JeM continue to operate, train, organise and fundraise inside the country in 2016.

In its annual ‘Country Report on Terrorism’, as mandated by the Congress, the State Department said that Pakistani military and security forces undertook operations against groups that conducted attacks within Pakistan such as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan.

“Pakistan did not take substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or the Haqqani Network, or substantially The Indian government sources said, “The segments on South and Central Asia in the US state department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 vindicate India’s longstanding position on the menace of cross-border terrorism in our region”.

limit their ability to threaten the US interests in Afghanistan, although Pakistan supported efforts to bring both groups into an Afghan-led peace process,” the State Department said.

“Pakistan did not take sufficient action against other externally focused groups, such as Lashkar-eTayyaba (LeT) and Jaishe-Mohammad (JeM) in 2016, which continued to operate, train, organise, and fundraise in Pakistan,” the report said.

India, it said, continued to experience attacks, “including by Maoist insurgents and Pakistanbased terrorists”.

Indian authorities continued to blame Pakistan for the cross-border attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, it said.

“In January, India experienced a terrorist attack against an Indian military facility in Pathankot, Punjab, which was blamed by the authorities on JeM. Over the course of 2016, the Government of India sought to deepen the counter-terrorism cooperation and information sharing with the United States,” the state department said.

The Indian government continued to closely monitor the domestic threat from transnational terrorist groups like ISIS and AlQaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, which made threats against India in their terrorist propaganda.

Many individuals were arrested for ISIS-affiliated recruitment and attack plotting within India, the report said. In a separate chapter, the state department listed Pakist-an as one of the safe havens of terrorism.