WASHINGTON – US Department of State has placed two Pakistani organisationsas the terrorists groups.

State Department on Monday identified Milli Muslim League (MML) andTehreek-e-Azadi-e-Kashmir (TAK) as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) affiliates andalso named seven members of the MML leadership as LeT activists who wereacting on behalf of LeT, according to a reportlink>by a private media outlet.

The State Department described the MML and the TAK as LeT ‘aliases’ andadded their names to its lists of Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO) andSpecially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT).

The designations clearly undermine MML’s effort to get itself registeredwith the Election Commission of Pakistan as a political party and contestthe 2018 general elections. It will be difficult for the Pakistanigovernment to ignore the designations and register MML as a politicalparty, as it would be seen as an act of direct confrontation with theUnited States.

These designations “seek to deny LeT the resources it needs to plan andcarry out further terrorist attacks,” the State Department said in astatement issued in Washington.

Concurrently with Monday’s State Department actions, the US Department ofthe Treasury designated seven members of the MML central leadership bodyfor acting on behalf of LeT: Saifullah Khalid, Muzammil Iqbal Hashimi,Muhammad Harris Dar, Tabish Qayyum, Fayyaz Ahmad, Faisal Nadeem, andMuhammad Ehsan.

Monday’s actions notify the US public and the international community thatTAK and MML are aliases of LeT. Terrorism designations expose and isolateorganisations and individuals and deny them access to the US financialsystem.