In an embarrassing diplomatic set back to India and its anti-Pakistan propaganda campaign, the financial action task force (FATF) has completely dented the fancy propaganda language of the New Delhi on the recent Pahalgam incident by omitting Pakistan in its official statement of condemnation. This conspicuous absence has not only rendered India frantic efforts of associating Pakistan with the attack in a deformed manner but has also revealed the insincerity and hypocrisy of its decades long and misleading resounding efforts to paint Pakistan with a black mark at the international front.
The fact that FATF did not make a noise on alleged involvement of Pakistan has been an unacceptable slap on the face of an overworked, and now listless, propaganda apparatus of New Delhi. This is not just an embarrassing situation in international affairs, but a fatal and embarrassing selfishness that India has worn as an international victim complex, which has been nurtured since governments over the past decades and particularly in the hardline government of Narendra Modi.
The Modi government had pinned all its hopes that FATF would support its allegations against Pakistan but with the global watchdog failing to list Pakistan the Indian government has the egg on its face, looks humiliated and isolated. India did not get a vindication, instead it received a stinging defeat, as even its unfounded allegations were not able to sail through the test of an international organization which specializes in hard facts not the geopolitical mischievous rumors. This episode is a direct failure of India in its plan to use multilateral forums such as FATF to persecute Pakistan. New Delhi has long endeavored to turn such platforms into the instruments of either coercion against Islamabad by posing as a long-term victim of cross border terrorism and overlooks its own bloody trace in unfortunate countries neighboring India.
This time, however, the effort to derail Pakistan over a false frame up of the Pahalgam incident has failed with a resounding failure and FATF decided not to lend credibility to Manmohan Singh and Modi who have tried to string together such unwarranted allegations. The non ratification has sounded as much a condemnation of the unscrupulous foreign policy that Modi is playing on the world map. India has been funding millions of dollars through the shadowy networks operated by the infamous Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to its proxy extremists; death squads and subversive agents whose remit was to bring its neighbors to their knees.
In the last four years, Pakistan has endured fifteen torturous FATF assessments which meant its financial routines, counterterrorist financing methodologies and its internal security plans are subjected to a full-scale audit. This has led Islamabad into record breaking records as more than 4,000 terrorism suspects have been arrested; freezing or repossessing assets in the tune of $120 million. These achievements have been accepted by international monitors, all the way up to FATF itself, as both real and ambitious, helping land Pakistan on the path towards flitting the Grey List off its books a diplomatic triumph that India could not stop nor refute.
In the meanwhile, the hypocrisy of New Delhi has been increasing by the day as it preaches counterterrorism to the rest of the world, it celebrates and honors openly known extremists and terrorists like the case of the killers of Rajouri on state honors and state protection instead of prosecution. Whereas Pakistan was left to take the whip of constant scrutiny, the Indian terror financing network has provokingly remained well guarded even after the threat of bulbous terror financing architecture within the country was found to be built out of tapestry through the use of fronts and fake Sangh Parivar charities and NGOs. Even as reliable sources claim that these groups clean over 220 million dollars a year to fund extremist violence in Kashmir, Baluchistan and other jurisdictions, the refusal of FATF to mention that India is a persistent violator of the Recommendation 8 (which requires close supervision of such NGOs) has been deafening.
Another humiliating fact that has been highlighted by India failing to pin down Pakistan regarding the Pahalgam incident is that the entire discourse set in New Delhi regarding the cross-border terrorism is based not on fact but fiction. Modi regime is at gripes to prove Pakistan a belligerent because it could not do that inside India, in Kashmir and in the northeastern states. However, the FATF decision not to approve the Indian lies on Pahalgam has put this strategy to waste and the world has to redefine who could be the aggressor in South Asia.
Worse still is the growing body of evidence that is pointing to the fact that India not only finances terror in other countries but is also arming state organizations to wage a state sponsored terrorism in other nations. The killings of Sikh militants on territory belonging to Canada and the United States allegedly at the behest of Indian intelligence officials are now under foreign scrutiny that may result in sanctions and ostracization.
It is on this backdrop that Pakistan has made a steady, verifiable advance in the meeting of FATF strict requirements as compared to the crumbling face of India. The apparent political will of Islamabad, operational and institutional reforms, not only have reversed its declining economic reputation but it has also justified its long-term claims that it had nothing to do with any event like Pahalgam. Conversely, India has bungled its own diplomatic effort to leverage FATF as a political cudgel against Pakistan so miserably and blatantly that instead of being the innocent bystander it is portraying itself to be, New Delhi is now revealed as a cynical plotter who bandied the name of an international institution to serve its own political ends.
The hypocrisy of India has therefore come to its logical and public end: on the international front it is preaching against terrorism, but in fact it is supporting chaos and subversion on the soil of its neighbors. This hypocrisy is no longer concealed and the demand to get an independent and in-depth FATF audit of the black budgets of India NIA and RAW becoming louder.
To conclude, the FATF refusing to support India on its lies regarding the Pahalgam incident is the much-needed change in the international critics of truth over South Asia. The international investigation has been completed; Pakistan has come out with viability and its lies have turned into India. With FATF ready to publicize its investigation of state sponsored terrorism in its next pending issue, India is bound to appear in the glaring light of international responsibility with its dark underworld of terror funding, undercover assassination squads and its double-dealing foreign policy. The international community will find it harder to regard India as a victim rather than a participant in terrorism, especially in acts of extremism, unless New Delhi decides to clarify things and move out of its violent policies.
