Financial Action Task Force, a Pashtun rights activist organisation, has blamed that the south Asian country of Pakistan is providing shelter to dreaded terrorists, including the Taliban. In the last meeting held in October 2020, the intergovernmental organisation had concluded that Pakistan will stay on ‘grey list’ until it abides a 27-point action plan. 

Fazal-ur-Rehman Afridi, a Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) member from France said that the tribal areas continue to remain as a safe heaven for the terrorists and the armed forces have failed to act against them. 

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He said that if one looks at the situation in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, they are adjacent to Afghanistan, where there is an increase in Taliban terrorist activities. In fact, in cities like Swabi, Mardan, Peshawar and even Quetta, there seems to be Taliban activities going around. They are openly holding huge gatherings and collecting funds openly and the government has clearly not responded to their actions.

Afridi in his statement added that,”It seems that either the state is responsible for these activities or there is no state in Pakistan. So, in both cases it has to respond to the international community.” The FATF decided to keep Pakistan on the ‘grey list’ till June recently, as it had recently reviewed the progress made by the government but could witness the lag in its action against terrorist financing. 

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Afridi gave example of instances that, whenever there is a United Nations of FATF meeting, these terrorists and their organisations are declared banned but the moment the meetings finish, such organisations resurface. 

A Taliban terrorist Ehsanullah Khan, who shot and badly wounded Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai nine years ago, has again threatened her through a tweet and said that there would be no mistake next time. Malala has asked Prime Minister Imran Khan in a tweet about the alleged shooter, Ehsan and wanted to know how he escaped from government custody.

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Adding to his statement, Afridi said, “Pakistan Army is very huge and its expenses are not covered by its present economy. So, in that context, it wants to conquer other countries or create instability in the region so that it can earn dollars from the international community as it has done in the so-called war on terror in the last 20 years in which they did not kill the Taliban and other terrorist groups, but they supported them to earn dollars from the international community and instead they killed innocent civilians. Thousands of Pashtuns, Baloch and Sindhis were forcibly disappeared, extra-judicially killed and tortured.”