In July this year, India told a UN Security Council meeting that it was “most regrettable” that genuine and evidence-based proposals to blacklist some of the world’s most notorious terrorists are being placed on hold, saying such “double standards” are rendering credibility of the Council’s sanctions regime at an “all-time low”. The reference was to India’s past attempts to designate terrorists under the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Qaida Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council and China allegedly impeding the process with procedural delays.
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has imposed sanctions within the scope of Article 41 of Chapter VII of the UN charter which states that “the UNSC may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the members of the United Nations to apply such measures.” In the past 56 years, 30 sanctions regimes, including 14 ongoing ones, with a focus on supporting political settlement of conflicts, nuclear non-proliferation and counter-terrorism (CT), have been established. Because of stakes, the fact is that some sanctions regime is more important for a particular member-state than others.
In July this year, India told a UN Security Council meeting that it was “most regrettable” that genuine and evidence-based proposals to blacklist some of the world’s most notorious terrorists are being placed on hold, saying such “double standards” are rendering credibility of the Council’s sanctions regime at an “all-time low”. The reference was to India’s past attempts to designate terrorists under the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Qaida Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council and China allegedly impeding the process with procedural delays.
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has imposed sanctions within the scope of Article 41 of Chapter VII of the UN charter which states that “the UNSC may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the members of the United Nations to apply such measures.” In the past 56 years, 30 sanctions regimes, including 14 ongoing ones, with a focus on supporting the political settlement of conflicts, nuclear non-proliferation and counter-terrorism (CT), have been established. Because of stakes, the fact is that some sanctions regime is more important for a particular member-state than others.
An Office of the Ombudsperson was established to mitigate the various concerns expressed over the process of listing as well as delisting. In 2011, in response to the engagement with the Taliban by the US, under the UNSC resolutions 1988 and 1989, the work of the original Committee, formed under the UNSC resolution 1267, was bifurcated with the separation of the mandate to oversee the implementation of the measures against individuals and entities associated with al-Qaida. In 2015, concomitant to another UNSC resolution 2253, ISIL (Da’esh) was also added as part of the mandate of the al-Qaida-related committee. Under the two mandates, there is also an ‘Analytical support and sanctions monitoring team’ which comprises ten experts and they come out with periodic reports providing information and trends of the various CT-related trends within the scope of the two mandates.
Over the years, India has expended a lot of diplomatic capital to enlist individuals as terrorists as part of the 1267 Sanctions UNSC Committee with a particular focus on India-centric terrorist outfits such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. India’s track record in this respect is mixed. A case in point was the ten years it took to list Bahawalpur-born Masood Azhar in the 1267 Sanctions UNSC Committee list. Some of the evidence against Azhar was already in the public domain. After his infamous release from Kot Bhalwal jail (J&K) in 1999 as part of the swap deal in Kandahar with the hijackers of IC-814, he returned to Pakistan to create the Jaish-e-Mohammad. Jaish has allegedly been responsible for many terrorist attacks in the nearly 20 years of its existence, including the attack on Parliament House on December 13, 2001.
In the period that Azhar’s case was under review, as per informed Pakistani scholars’ accounts, Jaish continued to raise funds and recruit in the southern part of Pakistan’s Punjab province; the Pathankot air base attack took place in 2016; on February 14, 2019, Jaish’s Kashmiri recruit Adil Ahmad Dar rammed his vehicle, armed with explosives, with a CRPF vehicle, killing 40 soldiers. Dar claimed his allegiance to Jaish in a video that was shot before the suicide attack. China, one of the P-5 members, had delayed Azhar’s listing all this while by invoking myriad procedural questions. Azhar was finally listed in May 2019. There was quick action when Pakistani Punjab-based Lashkar chief Hafiz Sayed was listed within a few days after the Mumbai attack in November 2008. The universal mass outrage of the attack was such that no member-state resisted or delayed the listing.
The evidence for a petition for a listing an individual or individuals is often generated by the intelligence assets or capabilities of a member-state. Presenting demonstrative and irrefutable evidence for listing in a manner that doesn’t blunt or compromise the future intelligence gathering capacity is a challenge. Secondly, the entire process to list and delist has moved in parallel to concerns expressed by some quarters that such processes should not be done with the political expediency of big powers and should be in line with the framework for international human rights and humanitarian law. A number of reports emanating from the multilateral arena have emphasized that.
No doubt, partisan geopolitical considerations of the UNSC members, particularly the P-5, directly impact the listing or delisting processes of terrorists in the UNSC. From 2010 to 2020, the calibrated speed at which the delisting exercise for individuals associated with the Taliban was carried out directly correlated with the US-Taliban dialogue in the last decade. At the same time, a multi-dimensional, proactive approach, in view of over two-decade-old history and workings of these mandates, may add weight to the petitioning by a member-state for listing under the consolidated UNSC Sanctions List.
