India, US call for ‘concerted action’ against terror groups, urge Pakistan to act

“More than two decades after 9/11 and more than a decade after 26/11 in Mumbai, radicalism and terrorism still remain a pressing danger for the whole world. These ideologies keep taking new identities and forms, but their intentions are the same. Terrorism is an enemy of humanity and there can be no ifs or buts in dealing with it. We must overcome all such forces sponsoring and exporting terror,” Modi said.

Modi, who is in the US on a state visit, had discussions with US President Joe Biden on Thursday on a host of international issues and bilateral cooperation.

“The United States and India stand together to counter global terrorism and unequivocally condemn terrorism and violent extremism in all its forms and manifestations. Prime Minister Modi and President Biden reiterated the call for concerted action against all UN-listed terrorist groups including Al-Qa’ida, ISIS/Daesh, Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and Hizb-ul-Mujhahideen,” the joint statement said.

Spurt of terrorist infusion

The call for “concerted action” against the terror groups, particularly the LeT, JeM and HuM, is significant as it comes at a time when a fresh spurt of terrorist infusion has been witnessed in the Jammu area. India’s efforts at the UN to designate operatives from these outfits as “terrorists” have often been blocked by China. The latest such episode earlier this week concerned LeT operative and key 26/11 accused Sajid Mir.

“They strongly condemned cross-border terrorism, the use of terrorist proxies and called on Pakistan to take immediate action to ensure that no territory under its control is used for launching terrorist attacks. They called for the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai and Pathankot attacks to be brought to justice,” the joint statement said.

Despite tremendous international pressure, particularly from the US, and in recent times the threat of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklisting, Pakistan has continued to drag its feet on comprehensive action against perpetrators of the two attacks. While the 26/11 attacks were carried out by the LeT, the Pathankot attacks were the handiwork of JeM.

Pakistan has been unable to complete investigations in both cases, despite proof being provided by India and the US. LeT operations chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who commanded the 26/11 attacks, was arrested by Pakistan authorities in 2008 but soon released on bail due to “insufficient evidence”. As the threat of FATF blacklisting loomed on Pakistan, authorities there arrested him in a case of terror financing in 2021.

Similarly, LeT chief Hafiz Saeed, who has been designated as a global terrorist, was never prosecuted for the 26/11 attacks by Pakistan. It was only in 2019 that Saeed was booked by authorities for terror financing. A court later sentenced him to over 30 years in prison.

Pakistan has also dragged its feet on action against JeM chief Masood Azhar, who masterminded both the Pathankot attack and the 2019 Pulwama attack. Last year, when the international community put pressure to act against him, Pakistan wrote to the Taliban to find him, saying he was in Afghanistan.

Following the Pathankot attack, a joint investigation team from Pakistan visited India to collect evidence. But no progress was made by the authorities there to prosecute the perpetrators.

In this context, the joint statement also said that the US and India “welcomed the cooperation between our two governments on counterterrorism designations and homeland security cooperation, including in intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation, and called upon the Financial Action Task Force to undertake further work identifying how to improve global implementation of its standards to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.”

Emerging technologies in terror landscape

India and the US have also raised flags over the use of emerging technologies in the terror landscape. “They noted with concern the increasing global use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones and information and communication technologies for terrorist purposes and reaffirmed the importance of working together to combat such misuse,” the statement said.

This is significant as both the J&K and Punjab borders with Pakistan have in the past few years been increasingly used to push drugs and arms in the region through drones. The low-risk and low-cost method of pushing arms has resulted in a spike in violent extremism in Punjab and sustained terror activities in J&K, despite security force operations. Killings of civilians and outsiders in J&K in the past couple of years have largely been carried out by small arms dropped by these drones.

The threat posed by drones, terror funding through cryptocurrency and the use of the Internet by terrorist outfits were also among the key concerns raised in October last year at the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee meeting in New Delhi.