LeT, JeT a major threat to India, says US report

New Delhi: The US State Department in its report “Country Reports on Terrorism 2018,” released on Friday has stated that terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad remain a major threat to India. The report also criticised Pakistan for allowing operatives of the terror groups to join the country’s electoral process.

The State Department report also claimed that Pakistan had failed recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Action Plan to deal with counter terror and money laundering. It has also failed to deal with groups and individuals involved in terror groups listed under UN sanctions as they continue to raise finances for their activities.

Both Lashkar and Jaish have been behind number of terror attacks in India like 26/11 Mumbai, a number of Army camps, Pathankot Air Force base and attack on Parliament. The report clearly mentions that Pakistan authorities have failed significantly to stop Lashkar and Jaish from raising money, recruiting and training.

Earlier, the FATF had placed on the “grey list” for dealing with different aspects of terrorism, including the failure to implement the UN sanctions related to designated entities. As a  member of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG), Pakistan has agreed to implement international standards to combat money laundering, terrorism finance, and proliferation finance but its implementation remained “very poor.”

The report states that Pakistan’s 2015 National Action Plan to deal with terror activities includes efforts to prevent and counter terrorist financing, including by enhancing inter-agency co-ordination on countering the finance of terrorism. But according to the report in Pakistan there are channels of unlicensed money transfer throughout the country and were open to abuse by terrorist financiers operating in the cross-border area.