It’s official. Maulana Masood Azhar, the Jaish-e-Mohammad leader, has been declared a terrorist by the United Nations Security Council. India had been asking the United Nations since 2008 to add his name to its list and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to make much of it at campaign rallies in his re-election bid. A spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Office, however, has said the Indian media’s attempts to build a narrative claiming a victory for India and a validation of its stance is ‘absolutely false and baseless’.
What should one make of it? Consider.
According to the United Nations announcement, Masood Azhar is accused of links with Al Qaeda, of raising funds for Jaish-e-Mohammad and planning and facilitating its activities, including recruitment and acquisition and supply of weapons. Pakistan, did not oppose the resolution introduced by the United States and China, which had blocked four previous attempts to put Azhar on the list, did not object to it this time. Dr Muhamamd Faisal, the FO spokesman, said it was because the resolution no longer linked the action to an attack in Pulwama, which India has sought to blame on Pakistan.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has recently said Masood Azhar has been keeping such poor health that he cannot even walk unassisted. He has also been under close monitoring since 2001 when the JeM was declared a terrorist organization for its support of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In February, he was reported to have issued a statement calling for support to militants in Indian Occupied Kashmir.
The government of a country whose citizen is put on the UN list is required to restrain the movements of such a person, particularly not allow him to travel abroad, freeze his assets and not allow him to acquire or display weapons. Islamabad can quickly tick all the boxes and report compliance. So if the resolution no longer links his terrorist credentials to Pulwama, what is in it for India? Not surprisingly Shiv Shankar Mennon, the former foreign secretary and national security advisor, recently said it was pointless, even counterproductive to a point, for India to so single-mindedly pursue the sanction. At best, said defence analyst Rahul Bedi, it would be a moral victory. He recalled that Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the erstwhile Lashkar-e-Taiba, too, was on the list but practically immune to the kind of scrutiny and prosecution that India sought for him.
But the United Nations also requires member states to build an effective narrative against terrorism and take all kinds of actions to discourage it. As FO spokesman said on Wednesday terrorism is a problem for everybody in the world and of particular concern for countries in our region, including Pakistan and China. *