China blocks proposal to sanction brother of JeM chief Masood Azhar, who masterminded IC 814 hijack

Rauf is the second terrorist based in Pakistan to be shielded by China from the UN sanctions this year

China has shielded another terrorist leader based in Pakistan, who masterminded a major airline hijack in 1999 to demand a prisoner exchange from India, from United Nations sanctions.

Beijing blocked a joint move by India and the United States to get the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to designate Abdul Rauf Asghar, a senior commander of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), as a terrorist and impose sanctions on him.

China, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, placed a “technical hold” on the proposal to designate him as an individual linked to Al Qaeda, Taliban and Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) and to put him under full-spectrum UN sanctions, including assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.

Rauf had masterminded the hijacking of the Kathmandu-Delhi flight IC 814 of the then Indian Airlines on December 24, 1999. He had planned and controlled the hijacking operation and forced the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government in New Delhi to release his incarcerated elder brother Masood Azhar and fly him to Kandahar in Afghanistan in exchange for the release of the aircraft with passengers and crew.

The US Treasury Department had designated Rauf and put him under sanctions as a terrorist in 2010.

He was the second terrorist based in Pakistan to be shielded by China from the UN sanctions this year. Beijing had in June this year blocked a similar joint move by India and the US to get the UNSC to designate the deputy leader of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), Abdul Rehman Makki, as a terrorist and impose sanctions on him. Makki was involved in raising funds, recruiting and radicalising youths to resort to violence and planning terror attacks in India, including the November 26-28, 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai.

Rauf, based in Bahawalpur in Pakistan, runs the JeM’s operations in the absence of his ailing brother and the founder of the organization Masood. He was also involved in the attacks on the Parliament of India in New Delhi in 2001 and on the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot in Punjab in 2016.

The proposal to place him under the UN sanctions was circulated by India, currently a non-permanent member of the Security Council, and the US, a permanent member of the council, among other members a couple of weeks back. China’s permanent mission at the UN headquarters in New York placed the “technical hold” on the proposal late on Wednesday – just before the deadline for any member of the Security Council to raise an objection to the move by India and the US would have ended.

As ‘technical hold’ could be stretched to six months and it could be reimposed repeatedly, China could use it indefinitely to stall the move made by India and the US.

A source in New Delhi said that both the proposals for putting Makki and Rauf under the UN sanctions were backed by incontrovertible evidence.

China’s latest move to shield terrorists from the UN sanctions and thus to save its ‘iron brother’ Pakistan from international flak for allowing individuals globally designated as terrorists to live free in the country came just a day after India tacitly hit out at both its western and the northern neighbours at the UN Security Council for their double standards on the issue of fighting the menace of terrorism.

“The practice of placing holds and blocks on listing requests without giving any justification must end,” Ruchira Kamboj, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, said during a briefing at the Security Council on Monday on threat posed by terrorism on international terrorism. “It is most regrettable that genuine and evidence-based listing proposals pertaining to some of the most notorious terrorists in the world are being placed on hold. Double standards and continuing politicization have rendered the credibility of the Sanctions Regime at an all-time low,” she said.

Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Government, told journalists in Beijing on Thursday that the 1267 Committee of the Security Council had clear regulations on the designation and procedures of terrorist organizations or individuals. “China has always participated in the work of the 1267 Committee in a constructive and responsible manner in strict accordance with the Committee's rules and procedures. We hope other members will do the same,” he said, replying to a question on China’s repeated moves to shield terrorists based in Pakistan from the UN sanctions. “China needs more time to evaluate it (the proposal to designate the JeM leader as a terrorist).”

Beijing in the past had similarly used “technical holds” for years to block New Delhi’s repeated moves to get the UNSC impose sanctions on Masood, the leader of the JeM based in Pakistan and the mastermind of several terrorist attacks in India, including the one on the paramilitary personnel in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir on February 14, 2019. China had finally in May 2019 allowed the Security Council to move against the radical cleric based in Pakistan.

China had earlier also blocked India’s moves to get the UN sanctions imposed on the LeT commander Zaki Ur Rehman Lakhvi and the Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin – both based in Pakistan.

The relations between India and China hit a new low over the past two years, ever since another military stand-off between the two nations started in eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020. Though protracted negotiations between India and China resulted in withdrawal of troops from some of the face-off points, a complete resolution of the stand-off still appears to be distant.