Pakistan narrowly escaped from new US sanctions: Report

ISLAMABAD – Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has saved Pakistan fromcrippling US sanctions by convincing the US State Department to upgrade thecountry’s status on the “Trafficking Watch List”. This miracle was madepossible, largely, by FIA working against the clock to get, with thesupport of the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the Foreign Office,the outgoing parliament to enact two landmark laws just before its termexpired on the 31st of May, 2018.link#_>

While Pakistan’s recent placement on the Financial Action Task Force’s‘grey list’ this month has understandably raised plenty of concernedeyebrows, few have bothered to take note that until last Friday, Pakistanhad been on the State Department’s equivalent of FATF grey list – the “Tier2 Watch List” – for four years running. In the 2018 edition of the StateDepartment’s Trafficking in Persons Report, released on 28 June, Pakistanhas been removed from the grey “Tier 2 Watch List” and placed in regularTier 2 in relatively decent company along the likes of Singapore and anumber of European countries such as Greece and Iceland.

As part of its annual “Trafficking in Persons Report”, the US StatementDepartment ranks countries of the world, based on the efforts countries aremaking towards addressing this in human crime, into one of the 4 categoriesor “Tiers”: “Tier 1” (Fully compliant), “Tier 2” (Not fully compliant yetbut making significant efforts), “Tier 2 Watch List” (Grey) and “Tier 3”(Black). Countries placed on the Watch List for 4 consecutive years, andwho do not demonstrate tangible and significant improvement in the 5thyear, are automatically downgraded to Tier 3 the following year and havebroad sanctions slapped on them which make them not only ineligible for US’own aid and cooperation but also earns them US opposition at US-dominatedmultilateral forums such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The importance the US attaches to the Pakistan’s policies and actionsregarding trafficking in human beings was highlighted in a meeting inDecember last year between the then interior minister Ahsan Iqbal and thevisiting Director from the State Department Kari Johnstone who wasaccompanied by the US Ambassador to Pakistan, David Hale, during thediscussion. In this meeting, as well as in a more frank no-holds barreddiscussion at the FIA Headquarters during the same visit, Ms. Johnston madeit clear that Pakistan was staring down the barrel ofa-gun-called-sanctions unless it took immediate and concrete steps such asenactment of anti-trafficking laws.

It just so happened that FIA had, in fact, been trying to bring in newseparate Migrant Smuggling and Trafficking laws since 2012 but had nevermanaged to obtain clearance of the Ministry of Interior, for one reason oranother, for placing the proposed laws before the Cabinet and theParliament. FIA was desperate to have the new laws because no laws existedin Pakistan which properly defined the crime of migrant smuggling nor didit have a legal instrument which comprehensively dealt with trafficking,especially domestic trafficking.

With still no new law in hand come Spring 2018, FIA found a powerful allyin the chief justice of Pakistan when he began to take a close look intothe problems holding FIA back pursuant to the suo motu notice he had takenof the Turbat tragedy in which 20 intending Pakistani migrants lost theirlives on the way to Iran. Surprised to find out that there was no law inPakistan which unambiguously defined the crime of migrant smuggling, thechief justice ordered, along with a host of other measures aimed atstrengthening the agency, the FIA to urgently proceed with drafting a newlaw to address the gaping legal hole.

Consequently, FIA prepared a fresh draft of the Migrant Smuggling Bill inaccordance with international and UN standards and spent the next fewmonths trying to push the law through the usual complicated bureaucraticchain to obtain numerous approvals required at the many different levelsincluding by the Ministry of Interior, Law and Justice Division, theCabinet Committee for Legislative Cases and the Cabinet and the primeminister himself.

Well-placed sources in the Foreign Office have revealed that sometimearound the end of March, with the FIA still having failed to receive allthe approvals required to place even the Migrant Smuggling bill before theParliament, the US upped the ante and the US Assistant Secretary of StateAlice Wells conveyed to the Pakistan’s then ambassador in the US, AitzazChaudhry in a meeting in Washington that, unless the government of Pakistanimmediately passed credible anti-trafficking legislation, Pakistan would bedowngraded to “Tier 3” in the upcoming Trafficking Report to be released inJune 2018 and that this demotion would attract severe punitive sanctionsagainst Pakistan. The sanctions would result in cut off of aid from the USitself as well as oblige the US to actively seek to deny the grant orextension of loans and assistance to Pakistan at forums such as banks andIMF. A number of other consequences, such as halting of US funding ofPakistan government officials’ training programmes, would also follow.

This meeting proved a turning point in the saga as the Foreign Officeconveyed the gist of the discussion between the US Assistant Secretary ofState and the Pakistan envoy in a tersely worded letter to the Ministry ofInterior. The letter made no bones about the Foreign Office’s belief thatunless the legislation was allowed to go through Pakistan would have USsanctions imposed on it.