Kabul rejects Pakistan’s claim on Masood Azhar, says JeM founder not in Afghanistan

The Taliban regime has dismissed Pakistan’s repeated claims that Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) founder Masood Azhar is operating from Afghanistan, with a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official confirming that he is not in the country.

Kabul reiterated that Afghan territory will not be used against any other nation. Islamabad has long maintained that Azhar fled to Afghanistan, particularly as it faces pressure from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to crack down on terror groups and their leadership.

Also Read: Masood Azhar and family missing, Pakistan tells terror financing watchdog FATF

The Paris-based global watchdog is set to review Pakistan’s anti-terrorism efforts at its upcoming plenary.

Azhar remains wanted in India for major terror attacks, including the 2001 Parliament strike, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the 2016 Pathankot airbase assault, and the 2019 Pulwama bombing.

Pakistan was placed under the FATF grey list between 2018 and 2022 for its systemic deficiencies in anti-money laundering and its failure to counter terror financing.

The key reasons included its failure to curb terror financing, particularly to Jaish-e-Mohmmed and Lashkar-e-Taiba terror networks besides weak implementation of financial sanctions on UN-designated persons, people tracking FATF’s actions said.

To exit grey listing, Pakistan was forced to take some steps, including banning JeM and LeT and their fronts and convicting leaders of these outfits.

One of the individuals who Pakistan convicted in absentia in 2021 was Azhar. He was designated as a global terrorist by the UN Security Council in May, 2019.

In 2022, Pakistan was allowed to exit from the grey list on the condition that APG (Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering) would continue to review its performance on its efforts on some specific points.

One of the points on which Pakistan continues to be under review by APG, on request from FATF, was its ongoing efforts to arrest Azhar.

After its exit from the grey list and decrease in international pressure and spotlight, Pakistan has backslided on assurances it had made to FATF to exit the grey list, the people cited above said.

Pakistan has failed to take steps to arrest Azhar claiming that he was not in that country, they said. Islamabad had claimed that Azhar had escaped across the Durand line in May, 2019 and has since then remained at large.

In September 2022, the Taliban government spokesperson had denied that Azhar was in Afghanistan or that Pakistan had sent any formal communication regarding his presence in Afghanistan.