Pakistani Horn Continues To Fund Terrorism (Daniel 8)

Elements in Pakistan continue to be major source of terrorist financing

Posted by New Delhi Times Bureau

A report by the US Treasury Department in Washington blames unidentified elements in Pakistan as major sources of terrorist financing. A British government report also found evidence of such funding via donations from Pakistan and Afghanistan to terrorist groups in Syria. Terrorist financing also became the focus of discussions at a White House mid-November meeting between US security officials and Pakistani Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif. ”Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment, 2015″ report found the Haqqani Network generating funds from a wide range of sources in Pakistan and Afghanistan including businesses, smuggling, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba receives funds from within Pakistan, through charitable front organisations like Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) and additional funds from commercial ventures and private donations during Ramazan and sale of animal hides during the Eid-ul-Azha.

Faisal Shahzad, who tried to blow New York’s Times Square, received funds from a TTP supporter in Pakistan. Saifullah Anjum Ranjha-a Pakistani national- pleaded guilty in US to laundering money and financing terror through international drug trafficking and international smuggling of counterfeit cigarettes and weapons. Another Pakistani is accused of manufacturing heroin in clandestine laboratories along the Afghan border and leading one of the largest heroin trafficking organisations in the world. He used to send the drug to more than 20 countries, including the United States. ‘Proceeds from his heroin trafficking were then used to support high-level members of the Taliban in furtherance of their insurgency in Afghanistan’- revealed the report.

In Pakistan the donations for ‘charity’ are usually diverted, drugs are sold, and legitimate-looking store fronts are used to collect funds, as small businesses are forced to pay protection money. Haqqani network operates in Afghanistan with Pakistan’s complicity. The group is involved in opium trade in Afghanistan as opium money directly funds warlords and escalates militancy. Such material evidences notwithstanding, Pakistan government has resorted to habitual denial. In spite of knowing the truth it refuses to accept, as intention is not honest. Unfortunately, there seems to be no change in its policy on terror as it still refuses to learn from past mistakes. When will Pakistan shun terror and start living as humans? Time is now ripe for a fundamental change in Pak society.

It is never too late for Pakistan to change its policy for the better.The earlier it is done, the better. Stifling terror financing should be made a part of National Action Plan. Investments in secular education and making normal education compulsory for Madrasas could reverse the current trend of indoctrination leading to religious fundamentalism. Audit of Madrass funds- Lal Masjid in particular- must be made mandatory. Strict implementation of the Anti-Terrorism Act (1997)- especially of Section 11EEEE- for suspected involvement in terror financing and embezzlement of funds will do wonders.

Pakistan is a country where making a fake id, a fake passport, fake documentation, or opening account in any bank is damn easy. Currently many tools are available to track terror funds; what is required is the strong will to implement. Strengthening the IT and surveillance infrastructure, as well as stringent enforcement of law to intercept and interpret data are needed. Corrupt politicians also provide moral and financial support to terrorists. The main financiers of terror feel emboldened when leaders of known US-designated terrorist organisations are roaming free and taking out rallies. The government’s capacity and intention to fight terror has lost its credibility. Pakistan must seriously introspect on the direction it wants its society to move. Once Pakistan government stops playing the double game and ceases to support terrorists, relationship with neighbours-India, Afghanistan and Iran- will definitely improve.

The Iranian Nuclear Game

Who Cares about an Iranian Nuclear Breakout? Beware of an Atomic “Sneak-out”

“One critical lesson from history is that would-be proliferators try to sneak-out; they don’t breakout.”

 

James M. Acton

November 4, 2014

It’s time for America to rethink its strategy for preventing Iran from getting the Bomb. Negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program are foundering on the question of how much enrichment capacity it can be permitted. So far, Tehran has refused to dismantle any of the 19,000 or so centrifuges it has installed. Its negotiating partners, led by the United States, insist that Iran can only be allowed to operate a few thousand at most. There is no clear path to breaking the deadlock.

The United States’ current strategy would make sense if Iran’s only option for acquiring nuclear weapons were a crash program using declared facilities that are inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency—the much-discussed “breakout” scenario. If Tehran goes nuclear, however, it will almost certainly be more surreptitious and build a secret, parallel program dedicated to military ends.

The United States should, therefore, aim to negotiate measures to prevent “sneak-out”—greater transparency, most importantly—and be prepared to compromise more over centrifuge numbers.

One critical lesson from history is that would-be proliferators try to sneak out; they don’t breakout. Six countries have been found by the IAEA to have violated their nonproliferation commitments: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Romania and Syria. Each of these states was guilty of clandestinely conducting nuclear activities that it was legally obliged to report. None made a brazen attempt to divert declared nuclear material that was under the watchful eyes of international inspectors.

Iran’s own nuclear program is a case in point. It acquired centrifuge technology in the 1980s and 1990s from the illicit supply network run by the notorious Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. Its uranium-enrichment experiments should have been reported to the IAEA and monitored, but were instead kept secret. By the time Iran’s nuclear program was publicly revealed, in August 2002, it was operating one secret facility in Tehran and was constructing a further two, including a large subterranean plant, at Natanz.

Being outed did not, however, stop Iran from a second sneak-out attempt. In 2006, it resumed tunneling into a mountain near the holy city of Qom and subsequently began to prepare the facility for the installation of centrifuges. Tehran should have declared this facility right away, but failed to do so until September 2009—when Western intelligence agencies, which had learned of its existence, were preparing to reveal it.

Iran’s focus on sneak-out is entirely rational; the IAEA is just too good at monitoring what’s declared. If Iran tried to remove even a small quantity of enriched uranium from a declared facility, it would, in all likelihood, be discovered. By contrast, detecting secret enrichment facilities is more difficult. As a result, Iranian decision makers appear to have concluded that they needed to go underground—both literally and metaphorically—if they wanted the Bomb. They may yet do so again.

America’s focus on breakout is, therefore, misplaced. While reducing the number of centrifuges at Natanz is a worthwhile goal, it is less important than Iran’s acceptance of much more intrusive measures to detect any secret facilities that it might try to build in the future. These measures should include—but go beyond—the Additional Protocol, an enhanced inspection arrangement, developed in the 1990s, following the discovery of Iraq’s clandestine nuclear program.

Iran could, for example, give the IAEA blanket permission to take environmental samples from any publicly accessible place in the country. Inspectors could then easily and rapidly investigate a suspect facility by searching for the traces of radioactive materials that inevitably leak out. Iran could also permit the IAEA to monitor non-nuclear materials that are used in the production of the feedstock for enrichment to help ensure that centrifuges couldn’t be supplied in secret. Interviews with Iranian scientists, without the presence of minders, could also be extremely helpful. No measure by itself would be a panacea, but a carefully constructed package would go a long way to ensuring that an Iranian attempt at sneak-out would fail.

Not only would a focus on detecting secret facilities be in the security interests of the United States (and Israel, for that matter), but it would also increase the chance of a final agreement with Iran being reached. Iranian negotiators appear to have relatively little flexibility over centrifuge numbers, probably because Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has tied their hands. However, they might have more flexibility to negotiate over transparency. It’s time for the United States to test whether they do.

James M. Acton is a senior associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.