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Pakistan and the shades of grey
  • The Financial Action Task Force meeting
    The Financial Action Task Force meeting
The news of the re-inclusion of Pakistan, after only three years, in the so-called gray list of the Financial Action Task Force, if confirmed, is likely to have consequences of a certain weight, and not only financial. First of all because, according to the rumors filtered out this morning, the decision would have been taken with the approval of China and the Gulf Cooperation Council that they would effectively withdraw their support to Islamabad. Still according to rumors, only Turkey remained to stand alongside Pakistan. Which says a lot about what happens at the moment to friendship 'deep as the ocean and sweet as honey' between Beijing and Islamabad. Most likely, Pakistan has tried to play with China the same game played for years with the United States, but with very different results: the Chinese, double-playing, they know at least as much as Islamabad and its army. As well as the Saudis, on the other hand. And while in Pakistan the usual voices are raised that cry to betrayal and remember the highest price, in lives and in money, paid by the land of the pure to fight against terrorism generated by herself, in the rest of the world we begin to look the facts and only the facts. And the facts are that, just as the FATF meeting was being held, Imran Khan and his party were voting in Peshawar for an increase of 277 million Pakistani rupees, in addition to the 300 million already allocated, to funding for the notorious Haqqania madrasa, where they studied and formed minds of the caliber of mullah Omar and Siraj and Jalaluddin Haqqani. Not only that: the government of Punjab, which regularly funds Markaz-e-Taiba in Muridke, home to the Jamaat-u-Dawa and its shadow associations, is thinking not to close the complex but to officially take control of it. The provision passed just a few days before the meeting of FATF, yet another freeze of the accounts of the aforementioned associations, is yet another attempt to throw smoke in the eyes of the international community: at the time when the measure was announced, the army he was already busy transferring accounts and changing names to the various associations.
Francesca Marino
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