In news

• Under pressure from the world community to act on terror, Pakistan banned 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniat (FiF) by issuing a United Nations Security Council (Freezing and Seizure) Order (SRO), 2019.

About:

• The objective of the SRO is to make certain UN Security Council sanctions are applied on individuals and entities such as the JuD and FiF.. The UNSC list includes the names of the al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, JuD, FiF, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other organisations and individuals. The SRO overrides all previous local listings and under it, the assets of terror groups are frozen and taken over by the Pakistani government.

India’s Response

• But India has dismissed the actions taken.
• “JUD, LeT, FiF have been banned by UN since 2009. So is Pak saying they are following that decision now? If so what were they doing all these many years.

Background:

• Pakistan’s flip-flop was very visible earlier in the day as a list from Pakistan’s interior ministry’s NACTA or the national counter-terrorism authority placed the JuD and FiF in the organisations “under watch” category despite Pakistan declaring publicly on February 21 that both would be banned.
• The banning had been decided after a national security committee meeting held under the chairmanship of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in February.
• The announcement of the ban came during the Financial Action Task Force or FATF meet in Paris from February 17 to 22 at which Pakistan was put under tremendous pressure to act on terror. FATF had slammed Islamabad in a statement after the week-long meet, saying the country had not demonstrated a “proper understanding” of the terror financing risks posed by Islamic State, al-Qaeda, JuD, FiF, LeT, JeM, the Haqqani Network, and persons affiliated with the Taliban.
• In the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack on February 14 in which at least 40 CRPF personnel died, the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Austrlia, and the EU have called for Pakistan to act against terror groups on its soil.