19-05-2025
The politics of UN terror proscriptions
An Indian delegation presented evidence against The Resistance Front (TRF) to UN counter-terrorism officials in New York, for designating TRF as a terror group under the UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1267 sanctions list. TRF, which claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam terror attack before retracting, is a proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) — a Pakistan-based UN-designated terror group under the 1267 sanctions list.
UNSCR 1267, adopted in 1999 by the UN Security Council (UNSC), began the sanctions regime against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and blacklisted terrorists and terror groups in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden and his associates. In 2011, a separate Taliban Sanctions Committee was constituted by UNSC to deal exclusively with the Taliban, which India chaired during our recent stint at the UNSC (between 2021 and 2022).
Despite being proscribed by UNSC, the world still seeks to normalise relations with the Taliban-led government — even as acting Prime Minister (PM) Hasan Akhund, acting first deputy PM Abdul Ghani Baradar and acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi are still on the Taliban sanctions list. Even as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria — remains on the 1267 Sanctions list, US President Donald Trump warmly shook hands with its former leader, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, now the interim President of Syria. And, in Pakistan, army generals attended funerals of terrorists affiliated with UN-sanctioned groups killed during Operation Sindoor. Welcome to the real world of UN's terror proscriptions!
The UN has not usually been rational or logical or even legal, but mainly political in dealing with terrorism. The counter-terrorism architecture put together by UNSC after the 9/11 attack in 2001 is disintegrating rapidly. An example is how the zero-tolerance-to-terror stance is understood by the West. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently reiterated this in connection with Operation Sindoor and India's strategy against terror going forward. We are also now sending all-party delegations to convey the country's strong message of zero tolerance for terrorism. In 2022, when I was the chair of the UNSC Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) — which has all 15 members of the UNSC — we were jointly drafting a statement of the chair to reflect the views of the entire CTC. As per India's policy, I suggested inserting the words zero tolerance to terror into the text. Much to my surprise, some of the western countries opposed its insertion since their understanding was that when countries go after terrorists, the policy of zero tolerance will give them the licence to violate the human rights of the terrorists! For them, the human rights of terrorists became more important than the people they have killed. Since I refused to accept a chair's statement without zero tolerance for terrorism, I delivered that statement as my own statement instead of that of the chair. Is it any surprise then that the West did not support counter-terrorism measures undertaken by India after Pahalgam? At the same time, zero tolerance to terror justifies Israelis killing 55,000 Palestinians over 20 months in retaliation to the Hamas terror attack of October 2023.
The number of Pakistani terrorists and Pakistan-based terrorist organisations in the 1267 sanctions list, including LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), is instructive. More than 150 of the listings have references to Pakistan, a huge number for a country that the international community hesitates to call out for sponsoring terror.
Strangely, designating a terrorist under 1267 is no guarantee that their country will punish or imprison them. UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed, founder of LeT, enjoys official protection and roams about freely in Pakistan inciting people to attack India and Kashmir. Pakistan brazenly hid Osama bin Laden next to their military base in Abbottabad till the US hunted him down.
India's attempts to enlist terrorists in the 1267 sanctions list have been thwarted in the UNSC by the likes of China, no doubt due to their 'iron-clad' friendship with Pakistan. While we call out the double standards of the West in combatting terror, it has been the West, and more particularly the US, which has broadly supported India in the UNSC on terror-related issues.
After a decade of China blocking India's proposal to sanction JeM chief Masood Azhar, he was finally listed in May 2019 but without mentioning any of his links with terror activities in India, especially in Jammu and Kashmir or even the Pulwama attack.
Soon after, when India was in the UNSC in 2021-22, it proposed several names for the 1267 sanctions list. The US joined us as a co-signatory. Predictably, it was blocked by China. Finally, the UNSC approved the listing of Abdul Rehman Makki, deputy amir/chief of LeT — the first listing with India as a proposer in the Council. Saeed was also the first to be expressly named for terrorist acts in J&K. It was a blow for Pakistan. One of the remaining terrorists on our list was killed in Operation Sindoor. Further, Makki himself is reported to have died last year. One only hopes that Makki does not reappear like Sajid Mir, a terrorist involved in the 26/11 attacks, whom Pakistanis declared was dead but only to sheepishly admit later under international pressure that he was indeed alive!
Our recent attempt to list TRF under 1267 sanctions will no doubt face the double block of China and Pakistan in the Council since they jointly erased any reference to TRF in the April 25 UNSC statement on the Pahalgam terror attack. It is equally well-known that Pakistan made desperate attempts with cooked-up charges to list four Indian Hindus as terrorists under 1267 sanctions so that at least Hindus get listed. These Indians were executing Indian-grant projects in Afghanistan. The Council rejected Pakistan's request, not once but twice. It is not a coincidence that the Pahalgam terrorists asked for the religion of the tourists and shot dead the Hindus.
As the track record of Pakistan's duplicity in fighting terror keeps lengthening, international patience keeps shortening. Operation Sindoor has exposed yet again their culpability.
TS Tirumurti is a former ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations. The views expressed are personal
