World must verify Pak claims on terror action

China may have bailed out Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed for the fourth time in the UN Security Council last week on the question of having its chief Masood Azhar listed as a “global terrorist”, not least because JeM has already been proscribed by the UN. Nevertheless, there would appear to be a strong case for the world to scour Pakistan with a fine tooth-comb to see if Islamabad has actually taken meaningful and concrete steps to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism which has been nurtured in that country for more than three decades, and has practically become an integral part of its society.

In the wake of the Pulwama attack on a CRPF convoy on February 14, which killed more than 40 jawans, and the subsequent Indian airstrike against a purported JeM training facility at Balakot inside Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan's government publicised that it was taking hundreds of extremists into detention. New Delhi has rightly called this a “cosmetic” exercise to ward off international pressure. Such steps have been taken by Pakistan before, but nothing much happens eventually. JeM’s Azhar as well as Hafiz Sayed of Jamaat-ud-Dawa — that had spawned Lashkar-e-Tayyaba — which take aim at India and are responsible for gruesome terrorist incidents in this country, calmly go about their business even when they are said to be under detention. When all else fails, the Pakistani courts free them saying that the evidence against them doesn’t add up. To end this charade, it will be useful if the international community took serious note of the fact that terrorist actions emanating from actors residing in Pakistan can conceivably lead to military conflict between nuclear weapons countries — a prospect that is fraught with dangerous possibilities, a taste of which we got after Pulwama. A mechanism needs to be devised so that a UN body, or possibly the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, which looks at terrorist and drug financing, could be mandated to physically verify inside Pakistan the steps Islamabad claims it has taken to end the menace of terrorism.

If a country like China should attempt to block such a move, it is conceivable that influential nations which are concerned about terrorism leading to a disturbance of peace in a region  can attempt to devise a procedure that would put Pakistan — and any other country harbouring terrorists — under serious scrutiny. It would of course be best if the initiative came through the UN system. Given Pakistan's track record, it boggles the mind how Beijing routinely indulges Islamabad's clandestine efforts at producing nuclear weapons and shields its pet terrorists from punishment. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Beijing needs to display greater sobriety and a sense of balance.