5 Taliban taken off UN sanctions list

Five Taliban members have been taken off a UN sanctions terrorism list.

UNITED NATIONS: Five Taliban members, including a former Afghan ambassador to the United Nations, have been taken off a UN sanctions terrorism list, Austria’s UN mission said on Friday.

Among the five is Abdul Salam Zaeef, who served as the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan before the US invasion of Afghanistan. Detained from Pakistan in 2002, he was moved to the infamous Guantanamo Bay where he was held captive until 2005. In January 2010, he authored a book named “My Life with the Taliban”.

Four others who have been struck off the list are Abdul Satar Paktin, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad Awrang, who was a former Afghan envoy to the UN, and two officials who are now deceased.

Austria chairs the UN Security Council panel that maintains a blacklist of individuals and entities linked to the al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Individuals on the UN sanctions list, which until now included 137 Afghan nationals, are subject to asset freezes, a travel ban and an arms embargo under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 adopted in 1999.

As part of his efforts to promote national reconciliation, Afghan President Hamid Karzai had asked the UNSC to remove from the terror blacklist the names of some Taliban members who were not linked to the al Qaeda. Removal from the list requires unanimous approval from all 15 members of the Security Council’s sanctions panel.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 31^st, 2010.