This February, Hafiz Saeed was sentenced by an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan for financing terrorist operations and for being the main person behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attack which killed 161 people. Saeed is the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba which is one of the largest militant groups in Pakistan. The UN and US have marked Saeed as a global terrorist with a $10 million dollar bounty.
The timing of his sentencing comes a week before the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) discusses Pakistan’s progress in fighting terrorism within their own country. Pakistan’s reputation regarding fighting terrorism has created the threat of being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force. Pakistan finally decided to sentence Hafiz Saeed in an attempt to appear to the world that they are working to fight terrorism so that they are not blacklisted by the FATF. However, Saeed has ties to Pakistan’s security establishment which puts into question whether or not Pakistan would really abandon Saeed. If Pakistan were to be put on the blacklist, that creates the potential for financial and diplomatic sanctions. Even with Saeed’s ties to the security establishment, the threat of international sanctions on Pakistan would prove to be more important to the Pakistani government. This would hurt Pakistan’s economy and possibly hurt its chance of continuation of a bailout it is receiving from the IMF.
Pakistan’s reason for sentencing Saeed may not be solely to fight terrorism but to keep them off of the blacklist of the FATF as they are on a list of countries in the grey area regarding money laundering and terror financing standards. However, Pakistan sentencing Hafiz Saeed is still a step in the right direction in fighting terrorism and complying more with the standards of FATF. Pakistan has also been arresting numerous amounts of terror suspects in hopes of avoiding international sanctions which would be very detrimental to Pakistan’s economy. Even with the strides that Pakistan is making to try to combat the financing of terrorism and money laundering within Pakistan in order to stay off the blacklist, whether or not these efforts will satisfy the standards of FATF is still in question.