Pakistan continued to serve as a safe haven for certain regionally focused terrorist groups and allowed groups targeting Afghanistan, including the Afghan Taliban and affiliated Haqqani network, as well as groups targeting India, including LeT and its affiliated front organizations, and JeM, to operate from its territory, said a US State Department report.
The suspension of US aid to Pakistan, which was announced by President Donald Trump in January 2018, remained in effect throughout 2019, the State Department said.
“Pakistan took modest steps in 2019 to counter terror financing and to restrain some India-focused militant groups following the February attack on a security convoy in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir claimed by Pakistan-based JeM,” it said.
In its Congressional-mandated annual report 2019 Country Reports on Terrorism, the State department said Islamabad has yet to take decisive actions against Indian- and Afghanistan-focused militants who would undermine their operational capability.
“While Pakistani authorities indicted LeT co-founder Hafiz Saeed and 12 of his associates on December 11, they have made no effort to use domestic authorities to prosecute other terrorist leaders such as JeM founder Masood Azhar and Sajid Mir, the mastermind of LeT’s 2008 Mumbai attacks, both of whom are widely believed to reside in Pakistan under the protection of the state, despite government denials,” it said.
Pakistan’s progress on the most difficult aspects of its 2015 National Action Plan to counter terrorism remains unfulfilled – specifically its pledge to dismantle all terrorist organizations without delay and discrimination, the report noted.
In June 2018, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed Pakistan on its “gray list” and issued an Action Plan directing Pakistan to take specific steps by September 2019 to address strategic deficiencies in its CFT efforts. The FATF expressed serious concern at its October 2019 plenary about Pakistan’s continued deficiencies but noted it had made some progress and extended the deadline for full Action Plan implementation to February 2020, the report stated.
In 2018, Pakistan was designated as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. It was re-designated as a CPC in 2019, it said.
The report indicted the Imran Khan government and military for their inaction, underlining that they “acted inconsistently with respect to terrorist safe havens throughout the country” and did not take sufficient action to stop certain terrorist groups and individuals from openly operating in the country.
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