New Delhi: A recent statutory notification by Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs has turned into another match of words between the two South Asian neighbours. While India claims that a Pakistani official document has mentioned that the fugitive mafia don Dawood Ibrahim is in Pakistani territory for the first time, Islamabad has responded by saying that the listing is not new, is “routine”, and based entirely on a United Nations list that the Security Council expects every country to act on.
What’s the trigger for the latest spat?
On August 18, Pakistan foreign ministry issued a Statutory Regulatory Order which noted that several resolutions of the United Nations Security Council had directed an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo against certain entities and individuals. In its annexure, SRO number 741 reproduced the list approved by the UNSC’s ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee.
Listed at serial number ‘QDi.135’ was one of India’s most wanted terrorists, Dawood Ibrahim, the mastermind of several terror attacks, including the 1993 Mumbai blasts. It included the various passports – Indian and Pakistani – that Ibrahim is associated with, as well as his three addresses in Pakistan.
This entry in the gazette, along with other names, are an exact reproduction of the UNSC listing of Dawood Ibrahim – down to the Pakistani addresses and tagging of some of the passport numbers with the word, ‘Misuse’.
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Speaking on condition of anonymity, Indian government sources on Saturday asserted that this was the first time ever that Pakistan has admitted the presence of Dawood Ibrahim on its territory. This publication, the sources asserted, was done to meet Islamabad’s responsibilities under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Since June 2018, Pakistan has been on the financial watchdog’s ‘Grey list’ due to “strategic deficiencies” in its anti-terror financing regime.
Partly due to official prodding and partly driven by its own zeal, a major section of the Indian media on Saturday reported the listing as proof that Pakistan – which has long denied that Dawood Ibrahim is on Indian soil – had finally been forced to admit that he was indeed there.
‘Not new, not an admission of anything’, says Pakistan
Late on Saturday night, the Pakistani foreign office issued a statement that the details of individuals put out in its order “reflect information” contained in the list entry of UN’s designated individuals and entities.
Pakistan also stated that media reports claiming Pakistan had imposed “new” sanction measures through its SROs were “not factual”. It also noted that Indian media reports of “Pakistan admitting to the presence of certain listed individuals on its territory, based on the information contained in the SRO, are baseless and misleading”.
“It is once again reiterated that the information contained in the SRO is reproduced as per the details in the list entry of the individuals/entities designated under the two sanctions regime, which is publicly available, and contains names of individuals who despite their confirmed deceased status still continue to be on the sanctions list,” said the statement from Pakistan foreign ministry spokesperson.
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There are earlier orders, but all uploaded in January 2020
While the listing put out by Pakistan is indeed a cut-and-paste from the original list issued by the UN – this is, in fact, the case with similar orders issued by dozens of countries around the world – and does not reflect any inputs (or admission) from Islamabad, what about the Pakistani claim that this is not the first time it has issued such a list?
Pakistan foreign ministry’s UNSC sanctions web page lists all the SROs till December 2015. Since the Indian government has blocked the Pakistani site, it can only be accessed in India via a VPN.
The first SRO, dated December 22, 2015, did list Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and the underworld Don, along with his Karachi addresses – a facsimile of the UNSC listing. Similarly, SRO 288 of March 31, 2016 and SRO 639, dated July 12, 2017, also had the same listing of Ibrahim and Lakhvi.
The only difference between Dawood Ibrahim’s listing in the SROs dated 2015 and 2016, on the one hand, and 2017 was the place of birth and numbers of properties. The 2015 and 2016 orders mention his birth place as a) Bombai b) Ratnagiri, India”. Two years later, it is only named as “Kher, Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, India”. The 2017 order also does not list a property at Karachi’s Margalla road, which was listed in the 2015 notification.
In between, UNSC committee had amended Dawood Ibrahim’s entry on August 22, 2016. The amendment deleted two points – ‘Bambai’ from Ibrahim’s place of birth and ‘Property at Margalla Raod F 6/2 Street no. 22, House number 29 in Karachi’ under Address.
Indian officials allege ‘back dating’, questions remain
Asked for their reaction to the fact that Pakistan does appear to have issued earlier orders listing Dawood Ibrahim, Indian officials speaking on condition of anonymity cast doubts on whether these orders had been uploaded earlier. “These [older] statutory resolutions appear to be back-dated. If these were true then it would have been reflected in FATF records. Lakhvi and Dawood have never been mentioned by Pakistan in any official document till the 2020 statutory resolution,” said an Indian official.
The Indian claim is difficult to verify. On the Wayback machine – an internet archive that takes snapshots of websites – it is possible to view older versions of web pages, but not links of files like Adobe PDF or word documents.
Nevertheless, it appears the first pass made at MOFA’s UNSC sanctions web page by the Internet archive project was in December 2019. But, the snapshot for December 12 says that the URL was not found.
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The second snapshot on Wayback machine on January 11, 2020, does not list the SRO order dated November 26, 2019, but has the other relevant SROs from 2015 to 2017.
Another archival crawl took a snapshot on February 9, 2020, which does list the the Statutory Regulatory Order dated November 26, 2019.
In other words, if there was ‘back dating’, this was likely done around then, and not in August, when the latest order was issued and caused a storm in the media.
Incidentally, the URL of the PDF files give a hint when they may have been uploaded.
For example, this year’s SRO issued on August 18 has a reference to ‘2020/08’ in its link. Similarly, a fraction of the URL of another SRO dated May 22 states ‘2020/05’.
However, the majority of SROs, from December 22, 2015 to January 16, 2020 had a reference to ‘2020/01’ in their URLs, suggesting a January 2020 upload. This included the December 2015, March 2016 and July 2017 SROs issued by Pakistan foreign office, which had mentioned Dawood Ibrahim and Lakhvi in their annexure.
Did these orders always exist in the Pakistani system but were never publicised till the ministry of foreign affairs decided to upload them on its website in January 2020, presumably under growing international scrutiny and pressure?
Or are the orders themselves an elaborate recreation – as Indian officials suggest – to deflect attention from the Indian spin that Islamabad had finally “admitted” Dawood had been in Pakistan?
If so, why would Pakistan have uploaded the earlier SROs in January 2020? And if they were uploaded in January 2020, how come no one in the Indian government noticed them?
These questions, as of now, remain unanswered.