Though it may not be blacklisted, it does slide further on compliances required for countering terror at FATF

Pakistan may not be blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the inter-governmental forum that links terror funding to freezing international aid, but India’s persistent campaign against it nursing terror hubs has clearly paid off. It now appears that Pakistan could slip into the “dark grey” list, a severe warning to take correctives, as it has but fulfilled only six of the 27 conditions of compliance to evade curfew altogether. Besides, the common cause on terror hubs impacting domestic politics that India has managed to drum up around the world, particularly winning US endorsement on this effort, means Pakistan has few friends. In August, the FATF’s Asia Pacific sub-group placed it in the “enhanced blacklist” for its failure to meet global standards. Yet its Prime Minister Imran Khan has been lobbying hard for the overall FATF vote, diverting attention from the terror factory at home to Kashmir, forging a new Islamic alliance with Turkey and Malaysia for a crusade-like stance against the Western world, still dangling the Taliban sword to keep the US invested in its relevance for Afghanistan and playing on Chinese anxieties about the Indo-US axis. And while Pakistan may scrape through this time, requiring just three members’ support to escape a funding ban, it has still got away by being a strategic counterweight for others’ geo-political concerns rather than attempting any course correction at home. What else explains the renewed push for militancy in Kashmir? That problem continues and can only be beaten by now normalising life in the Valley. Discontent cannot be allowed to fester under lockdown for Pakistan’s no-risk benefit schemes. 

So what are India’s obstacles? The recent incremental push in bilateral relations with China has meant that it has come around to agreeing with our viewpoint of combatting terror without referencing Pakistan. How else could it justify its own clampdown on Uighur Muslims? And though it dragged its feet at the UN, it did assent to designating Masood Azhar as a global terrorist. But as the new president of the FATF, China isn’t expected to ignore concerns of its all-weather friend Pakistan. It has wriggled a bit here and there but cannot abandon its ally given its strategic interests in the region. Direct transactional benefits with China will frankly take a long time to mature as significant tradeoffs on Pakistan. Of course, there are two more nations, Turkey and Malaysia, to deal with. Both are now spearheading a new-Islamic axis as India has stepped up diplomatic engagement and is building on mutual understanding with the UAE and Saudi Arabia. In fact, India has made significant inroads in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which has traditionally been opposed to it on Kashmir. But with the UAE and Saudi Arabia inviting India as an “observer” in its last edition, the OIC has warmed up a bit albeit Malaysia and Turkey continue to support Pakistan. In fact, Khan is now advocating a trilateral forum for a neo-Islamic world distinct from the traditional pan-Islamism. This leadership challenge to religious legacies has not gone down well with even Saudi Arabia of late. India, too, has now given up the charm offensive with both Turkey and Malaysia and is hitting back economically. It is reviewing imports of palm oil and other products from Malaysia in response to its Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speech on Kashmir. With that country hosting radical Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, there are some creases of discomfort. Reports say that following Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s address on the Kashmir issue, India pulled out of discussions with Anadolu Shipyard, which intended to tie up with with us for building a 45,000-tonne fleet support ship. Simultaneously, India is also building bridges with the ring states around Turkey and Malaysia — Cyprus, Armenia and Greece around the former and Indonesia around the latter. India is now pegging its diplomacy on sound economic sense and that’s delivering results, particularly in one-on-one negotiations in a multilateral world. It is demanding that sensitivities be shown to it in return, considering some of these nations are defaulting on rights records too — Turkey in Syria and China in Hong Kong, Tibet and in Uighur-dominated Xinjiang. In fact, India has stayed away from commenting on these issues until now, when it has condemned Turkey’s action against Syria. Smart reasoning and corresponding posturing might change the way the world perceives our concerns.