ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday highlighted a global policy blindspot at the United Nations Security Council that was allowing right-wing and fascist movements to fuel extremist violence without attracting the same level of scrutiny as Muslim groups, despite posing serious threats in various parts of the world.
In remarks at a high-level Security Council briefing on threats to international peace, Pakistan’s UN envoy Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said his country had suffered deeply from militancy and condemned terrorism in all its forms. However, he urged the international community to revisit the global counterterrorism discourse, calling for a uniform application of the term “terrorism.”
“There has been a surge in the emergence of right-wing, extremist and fascist movements in several countries and regions of the world leading to terrorist violence,” he told the Council. “Yet, we see a strong inclination to see acts by non-Muslims not as terrorism, but often described just as violent crime.”
“It is not understandable, and is indeed unacceptable, that every name on the Security Council’s terrorism lists is Muslim, while terrorists and violent extremists elsewhere escape scrutiny,” he said. “There is no non-Muslim in the lists. This must change.”
Ahmad pointed out this approach ran counter to the UN’s own position that terrorism should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or ethnic group.
The Pakistani envoy also reiterated his country’s concern over the challenge of militant violence emanating from Afghanistan, calling it “the single most potent threat” to the region and the world.
He cited the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as the largest UN-designated militant outfit operating from Afghan soil, with nearly 6,000 fighters posing a direct threat to Pakistan’s national security.
“With safe havens close to our borders, it directly threatens our national security,” Ahmad continued, adding there was “credible evidence of collaboration” between the TTP and the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Majeed Brigade.
These groups, he noted, had jointly targeted Pakistan’s strategic infrastructure, economic projects and civilians.
He recounted recent attacks including the hijacking of a passenger train in Balochistan earlier this year in March and a school bus attack in Khuzdar in May that left 10 people dead, eight of them children, pointing out that these acts were carried out by the same groups.
Ahmad accused Pakistan’s “principal adversary in the region” of sponsoring militant violence on its soil without naming India, saying it was also carrying out “extra-territorial assassinations that have gone global.”
He also condemned a cross-border strike by New Delhi in May that killed 54 Pakistani civilians, including 15 children, and led to an intense four-day war between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
