Presence of Pakistani ISIS cadres in Syria revealed

A list shared by the United States backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has revealed around 29 Pakistanis who are in their custody for fighting for the ISIS.

As per the list, as many as nine Pakistani ISIS cadres are women, of whom three have the citizenship of either Turkey or Sudan. Among the men, one has the citizenship of Canada.

The report has surfaced amid Pakistan’s recent attempts to avoid a demotion from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey list to the blacklist during the upcoming October meeting.

Recently, Pakistan imposed sanctions on more than 88 terrorists associated with different terrorist groups, including Daesh, al-Qaida, and Taliban.

Pakistan is in the grey list since June 2018 and the government had given a final warning in February to complete the remaining action points by June 2020. Pakistan has been on the FATF grey list in 2008, 2012 and 2015 as well.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the FATF had extended the June deadline to September.

While Pakistan tries to showcase its ‘efforts’ in combatting terrorism, there have been reports from Afghanistan giving ample evidence of the presence of Pakistani terrorists on its land.

After an attack on Afghanistan’s Jalalabad prison, there have been speculations that prisoners who escaped were mostly captured Taliban terrorists both from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On August 1, Former Afghan intelligence chief Rahmatullah Nabil had termed agents of Pakistani spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as “termites” who are destroying the Afghanistan system stating they pose serious threats to the country and should be confronted.

Nabil was quoted as saying, “There are termites which are destroying the system. The ISI (Pakistani military intelligence) agents in the system must be confronted.”