The FATF Action Plan

FATF has the potential to take action against Pakistan for failing to do enough to prevent the financing of terrorism

The final plenary meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that has the potential to take action against Pakistan for failing to do enough to prevent the financing of terrorism is underway in Paris. Finance Minister Dr Shamshad Akhtar is there with her team to plead our case and she has to hand a 26-point action plan set to run over the next 15 months that it is hoped will allay the fears not only of the FATF but of the wider world, that has long taken a gelid view of Pakistan’s efforts to interdict the flow of money into terrorist coffers and the actions of those that facilitate that. There can be no ducking and diving this time, it is a day of reckoning, and the Action Plan bears close examination.

First to note is that the plan is not the work of Pakistan, it was put together by the International Cooperation Review Group and it requires Pakistan to proactively cooperate with counterpart bilateral agencies to choke financing to Da’ish, al Qaeda, Jamaatud Dawa and its affiliate FIF, LeT, JeM, the Haqqani Network and persons affiliated with the Taliban. All of these groups/individuals have operated within Pakistan and despite being proscribed some still are, their street activities being obvious. Some enjoy considerable popular support financial and otherwise.

The goals set are tough with the first to be achieved by January 2019 and for all to be fulfilled by the end of 2019. The first question to arise is whether the government and the bureaucracy have the physical capacity to fulfill the demands, and secondly given that their fulfillment is to occur across a general election and the first year of a new government is there the political will? Both are unknown but it is not unreasonable to deduce that the chances of hitting every target in the time frame are remote. Some may argue that Pakistan is being set up to fail and that sanctions are inevitable, others that the goals will incentivise the interim and later the elected government to do some long-overdue housekeeping. Either way, the other shoe has dropped.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28^th, 2018.

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