Pakistan has issued sweeping financial sanctions against Afghanistan’s Taliban, just as the rebel group is in the midst of a US peace process in the neighboring country.
The orders, which were made public on Friday, identified dozens of individuals, including Taliban chief negotiator Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and several members of the Haqqani family, including Sirajuddin, the current head of the Haqqani Network, and deputy head of the Taliban.
The list of sanctioned groups included others besides the Taliban and was in line with a five-year-old United Nations resolution sanctioning the Afghan group and liberating its assets.
The orders were issued as part of Pakistan’s efforts to prevent them from being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which monitors money laundering and ‘terrorist group’ activities, according to security officials. spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
However, in a statement issued Friday, Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesman said on August 18 that it had issued a “sanctions order” according to “information contained in the list of UN-designated individuals and entities”.
“These lists include names of individuals and entities designated under the two sanctions regimes established under UN Security Council resolutions,” it said, denying new sanctions were imposed, as reported in “sections of the media”.
Last year, the Paris-based FATF put Islamabad on a gray list. So far, only Iran and North Korea are on the blacklist, which severely limits a country’s international lending opportunities.
Pakistan is trying to get off the gray list, officials said.
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There was no immediate response from the Taliban, but many of the group’s leaders are known to have businesses and property in Pakistan.
Many Taliban leaders, including those living in the very fearful Haqqani Network, lived in Pakistan in the 1980s, when they were part of the Afghan “mujahideen” (resistance fighters) and allies of ‘ the US to end the 10-year invasion of Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union. That conflict ended in February 1989.
Pakistan has refused to grant sanctity to the Taliban following its ouster in 2001 by the US-led coalition, but Washington and Kabul have regularly accused Islamabad of providing them with a safe haven.
However, it was Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban that Washington eventually sought to exploit to advance its peace talks with the armed group.
The US signed a peace agreement with the Taliban on February 29 this year, which aims to end Washington’s nearly 20 years of military involvement in Afghanistan, and was named the nation’s best hope for peace after more than four decades. of war.
But even as Washington began withdrawing its troops, efforts to begin talks between Kabul’s political leadership and the Taliban were thwarted by delays in a prisoner release program.
The two sides will release prisoners: 5,000 by the government and 1,000 by the Taliban, as a benevolent gesture ahead of the talks. Both sides blame the other for the delays.
Press the Taliban?
The timing of Pakistan’s decision to issue mandates for the implementation of the restrictive sanctions could also be seen as a move to put pressure on the Taliban in a swift start of intra-Afghan negotiations.
Kabul has fired a traditional jirga (council) order to release the last Taliban prisoners it holds, saying it wants 22 Afghan commandos held by the armed group first liberated.
Like the Taliban, the orders target al-Qaida and its affiliate ISIL (ISIS), which has carried out deadly attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
They also target banned Pakistani groups such as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), thousands of whom the UN believes are hiding in remote parts of Afghanistan.
The TTP has declared war on Pakistan, carried out one of the worst attacks in the country in 2014, and killed 145 children and their teachers at an army public school in northern Pakistan.
The orders also targeted banned anti-India groups considered allied with Pakistan’s security services.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
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