The world knows that Pakistan is the centre of jihadi terror in the world. Though the US was convinced that Pakistani terrorist agencies or their sponsors and supporters were directly or indirectly involved in jihadi attacks on World Trade Centre in NY, yet for other reasons Washington did not take the right steps to curb the rising crescendo of terror in Pakistan. And when former President Bush bluntly told Pakistan that it should come out whether it is “with us or against us:, the then Pakistani President General Musharraf lost no time in declaring his state’s allegiance to the United States.
But the US and the world knew that General Musharraf was playing a double game. He continued with clandestine and secret connections with the jihadi terrorist outfits on Pakistani soil and on the other hand he began assuring the US that he was curbing the activities of the terrorists on his soil if these were there. Pakistan adopted a policy of denial saying that Pakistan itself was the victim of terror. But the world would not be convinced. Pakistani secret agency ISI raised a number of jihadi groups under different names and places of operation. The Lashkar-e-Toiba group of Hafiz Saeed became active in Kashmir and continued till date. Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkari Jhangvi and numerous other terrorist groups gave outright support to Al Qaeda when Osama bin Laden moved to the NWFP of Pakistan now called Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa. Waziristan became the main base of Taliban and Tehreeki Taliban of Pakistan against which Americans and NATO forces have been fighting relentlessly,
Pakistan made umpteen commitments that it would not allow the jihadis and terrorists use its soil for launching attacks on a neighbouring country. But the ground reality is that it continued to send the jihadis as suicide bombers into Afghanistan and Kashmir. The US has full evidence of these illegal and criminal activities of Pakistan and Pakistan based terrorist groups. These groups have become powerful because they manage to get enormous funds through various agencies and through illicit sources. Through their money power they recruit young people and make them suicide bombers to spread terror in the neighbouring reigns.
The US had already imposed ban on some of the terrorist organization but these continued to function under different names. Now John Smith, Director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States said in a statement that the US has imposed sanctions on Pakistan-based extremists and an organisation run by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed’s JuD group as part of an effort to disrupt their leadership and fund-raising networks. The sanctions have been slapped to disrupt the funding of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and its front for charitable activities, the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Dawa al-Qu’ran (JDQ), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and ISIS-Khorasan. These sanctions seek to disrupt the financial support networks of terrorists based in Pakistan who have provided support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and LeT for recruitment and funding of suicide bombers and other violent insurgent operations. The US said it would continue to aggressively target extremists in Pakistan and the surrounding region, including charities and other front groups used as vehicles to facilitate illicit terrorist activities.
This is a welcome step and the fact of the matter is that the US should have taken this step long back. It is the responsibility of the world’ strongest democracy to save democracy as the philosophy of modern political system and it has to be understood that the aims and objectives of Pakistan based terrorist organizations is to oust democratic dispensation and replace it with the sharia and the Islamic Caliphate. India has been insisting that there has to be an international awareness of facing this menace of terrorism and that all democratic and peace loving countries in the world should raise a common platform to challenge this scourge. Terrorism is funded strongly and the need of the hour is to dry the channels of funding so that the strength of jihadis is reduced, Although the world is not still responding to the call of Modi made in G-20 conference in Turkey two years ago yet the US has begun to realise that this menace must be eradicated lock, stock and barrel. We hope that other countries of the world that have suffered at the hands of the terrorists like France, Spain, UK and Russia will now have a new thinking on the need of forming a common front against terrorism.
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