[Current Affairs] August 24,2020 Top Pakistan Current Affairs for PPSC Test Preparation

What’s going on? Pakistan issued financial sanctions against Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgent group. The order includes dozens of individuals, such as the Taliban’s chief peace negotiator, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Pakistan’s list of sanctioned groups also includes Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and TTP (i.e. the Pakistan Taliban).

The details: According to security officials who chose to remain anonymous,Pakistan ordered sanctions to avoid being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which monitors money laundering and tracks the activities of terrorist groups. The FATF wants Pakistan to ramp up its regulation of money laundering and terrorist financing. Right now, Pakistan is on the FATF’s grey list (i.e. the warning list). A spot on the blacklist could wreck Pakistan’s international borrowing capabilities. However, Pakistan’s foreign ministry suggested that sanctions were simply in line with a list of UN designated individuals.

The context:

• Rapid-fire history lesson: Pakistan and the Taliban have a long history together. With covert backing from US and Pakistani intelligence agencies, the Afghan mujahideen (i.e. Islamic guerilla fighters) banded together to resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1970s-80s. Later on, the mujahideen became the Taliban.

• Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban: Pakistan was reportedly one of the only three countries, along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which recognized the Taliban govt when it ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Afghanistan and the US constantly accuse Pakistan of giving the Taliban a safe haven after a US-led coalition pushed them out of power in 2001. However, Pakistan always says ‘untrue.’

• US-Taliban peace talks:The US leaned on Pakistan to help facilitate peace negotiations with the Taliban. In February this year, the US and Taliban signed a peace deal. As a part of the deal, the US will end its military engagement in Afghanistan after more than four decades of war. In return, the Taliban promised not to attack the US and NATO troops, or shelter militants like Al-Qaeda.

• Intra-Afghan negotiations: The US is also trying to kickstart direct peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan govt. Very long story short, the Taliban and Afghan govt have been in fight mode for 20-something years. The US wants to make sure Afghanistan doesn’t go up in flames due to internal conflict and instability after withdrawing all of its troops.

The bottom line: In addition to being wary of the FATF blacklist, there’s a chance Pakistan implemented sanctions on the Taliban as a pressure tactic to make sure they give the Afghan govt some face-time.

MARKET RECAP

The benchmark KSE-100 index closed at 39,621.59 after dropping 246.96 points as of August 21, 2020.