A new bill moved in the U.S House of Representatives in the wake of the terrorist attack on an Army base in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir prods the administration to designate Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. The bill is sponsored by Ted Poe from Texas who is also the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Dana Rohrabacher from California. Both are Republicans.
The ‘‘Pakistan State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act of 2016” calls on the U.S. administration to provide a report on whether or not Pakistan qualifies as such under various U.S. laws. The bill underlines multiple facts that the members think make Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. The bill lists Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) involvement in supporting terrorism in Afghanistan and quotes the Department of State’s 2016 Country Reports on Terrorism that “Pakistan has not taken sufficient action against groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which continued to cooperate, train, organise, and fundraise in Pakistan.”
The bill envisages a two-step process towards designating Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. If enacted into law, it will require the administration to submit to Congress a report within 90 days, determining whether Government of Pakistan, including any agents or instrumentalities “committed, conspired to commit, attempted, aided, or abetted any such act” referred in the bill. Within 30 days after the first report, the Secretary of State will be required to submit another report explaining whether any of these acts constitutes support for international terrorism and “a determination that the Government of Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism.” If the administration decides not to designate Pakistan as state sponsor of terrorism, it will have to give “a detailed justification.”
“Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, al-Qaeda leaders and the Afghan Taliban fled Afghanistan to Pakistan and settled in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). (It was) subsequently revealed that Pakistan’s ISI facilitated al-Qaeda’s movement of fighters to and from Afghanistan as well as the terrorist organisation’s purchase of weapons,” the bill says.
The bill says the Government of Pakistan, and the ISI in particular, provides support and a safe haven to groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. The bill recalls that the then Chairman of the U.S Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen testified in 2011 that ‘‘the Haqqani Network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s ISI.” The bill said, with ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted various attacks against U.S. in Afghanistan, including a 2011 attack on its embassy in Kabul.
“The founder and leader of al-Qaeda, > Osama bin Laden, was found and killed in the Pakistani military town of Abbottabad in 2011. The Government of Pakistan subsequently condemned the raid that killed the terrorist leader and continues to imprison Dr. Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who played an instrumental role in identifying Osama bin Laden’s hiding place,” the bill says.
The bill also cites a 2012 NATO report that indicated that the Afghan Taliban is directly assisted by the Pakistani security services and noted that ‘‘Pakistan’s manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues [unabated]’’. “NATO report also suggested that Pakistan is aware of the locations of senior Taliban leaders, including one who maintained a residence in the immediate vicinity of the ISI headquarters in Islamabad.”
