How Pakistan’s Overzealous Foreign Minister’s Tweet Helped India, US Get It On Terror Financing Watchlist

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decided to place Pakistan on its global terrorist-financing watchlist after China lifted its objections to the move. The decision to put Pakistan back on the watchlist, three years after it was removed from it, came following high diplomatic drama that lasted for over two days.

India and the United States (US) conducted a coordinated and sustained diplomatic outreach to get Pakistan punished for not doing enough to rein in its terror proxies. The effort fell through when the US-led proposal did not get support from China, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia in the shorter plenary of the FATF.

Soon after the initial effort failed, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khwaja M Asif, who was in Moscow at that time to hold talks with his Russian counterpart, sent out a tweet claiming that his country’s efforts to steer clear of greylisting had “paid”.

The tweet provided India and the US another window of opportunity. The two countries used the tweet to underline Pakistan’s lack of seriousness “towards FATF and its rules of confidentiality” and introduced a fresh proposal in the longer plenary of the international task force, a report in The Print said.

To avoid roadblocks, the US convinced Turkey and Saudi Arabia to support the proposal while India reached out to China to get it to back Pakistan’s greylisting. This was not an easy task, not least because of the China-Pakistan relationship, as the two countries define it, is “higher than mountains, deeper than the ocean, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey”.

However, Pakistan’s illusion that its all-weather ally will not move away from backing it came to an end as Beijing responded to New Delhi’s outreach favourably. This became possible after India and China struck a deal “related to support for a greater FATF role for Beijing in the future,” a report said.

“China is lobbying for a top position in the FATF and will need support from the sponsor countries. India and US pledged support to China in return for China's neutrality on Pakistan,” another report claimed.

Pakistan’s cosmetic efforts, undertaken at the last minute, did not help it. The country will be placed on the terror financing watchlist in June 2018.