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India Gazette
a day ago
- Politics
- India Gazette
'Terrorism and dialogue cannot go together' - India on talks with Pakistan
New Delhi has urged Islamabad to "hand over" terrorists and vacate the "occupied" part of Kashmir India has reiterated that "terrorism and dialogue cannot go together" in response to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's remark that Islamabad is ready for dialogue with its neighbor. Speaking at a press briefing in New Delhi on Thursday, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal underscored the country's unchanged position on engagement with Islamabad. "And as far as the issue of terrorism is concerned, any discussion with Pakistan will focus on the list of terrorists we had provided to them some years ago - they should hand them over to us." Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday echoed that stance, insisting that Pakistan must hand over designated terrorists, including Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed, the respective leaders of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) and Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LeT), "if it is serious about talks." Both men are designated as terrorists in India but are also on the United Nations (UN) 1267 ISIL and Al-Qaida Sanctions List. "It would be in Pakistan's interest to uproot the nurseries of terrorism operating on its soil with its own hands," Singh said. Speaking earlier this week at a Pakistan-Trkiye-Azerbaijan trilateral summit in Azerbaijan alongside presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ilham Aliyev, Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif said his country wants "peace in the region," which requires "talks on the table" on Kashmir, a region that has been claimed by both countries ever since their independence from Britain in 1947. "I have said in all earnest that if India wants to talk on countering terrorism in sincerity of purpose, Pakistan would be willing to talk to India on this issue as well," Sharif was quoted by The Dawn newspaper as saying. Commenting on Kashmir, the Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson reiterated that the issue would be resolved bilaterally when Pakistan vacates the part of the region which it holds "illegally and unlawfully." The statements come after New Delhi launched military action against targets in Pakistan, which it labeled as "terrorist camps." The operation was a response to the April 22 massacre of 26 people in Pahalgam, in India's union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which New Delhi blamed on a Pakistan-sponsored terrorist organization. READ MORE: How Moscow's legendary S-400 missiles helped India outgun Pakistan Islamabad denied any involvement in the attack, with Pakistani top officials claiming the country was itself a "victim of terrorism." India insisted that it only targeted locations linked with terrorist organizations, and not Pakistani military or civilian targets. Islamabad, however, accused Delhi of targeting civilians. It later retaliated by attacking Indian military sites, leading to further escalation by both countries. After a brief but intense conflict, a ceasefire was announced on May 10.
Hindustan Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Who is Hafiz Abdul Rauf, man leading funeral of terrorists killed in Operation Sindoor?
In an attempt to downplay a notorious terrorist's profile and portray him as a "common man", Pakistan inadvertently confirmed the identity and presence of Hafiz Abdul Rauf, a US-designated terrorist and senior Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative, on its soil. At a press conference, Pakistan's Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, attempted to portray Rauf as a common man with "three daughters, son" who had led the prayers of terrorists killed at the Lashkar-e-Taiba headquarters in Mudrike, Pakistan's Punjab, during India's Operation Sindoor. "This man is Hafiz Abdur Rauf, who is leading the prayers. He has three daughters, a son, and he was born in March 1973. You can see his family details and everything," Chaudhry had said in a presentation during a press conference on Sunday, in which he had shown Rauf's details. India flags terrorist Hafiz Abdur Rauf's identity India was quick to respond and pointed out the nexus of the Pakistani state and terrorists operating on its soil when it flashed the photograph of Rauf leading the funeral prayers of slain terrorists. "The identity details shared by DG ISPR completely overlap with the details of Hafiz Abdur Rauf, a member of LeT's senior leadership since at least 1999 and part of the US Sanctions List," a statement from the Press Information Bureau said on Monday. Hafiz Abdur Rauf, a US-designated terrorist, has been an active member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) since 1999 and the chief of the banned Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF). He is believed to be a close associate of the November 2008 Mumbai terror attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed. The funeral ceremony of terrorists was attended by senior Pakistani military and police officials, and even featured a wreath from Pakistan's Punjab chief minister, Maryam Nawaz, who is also Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's niece. The US sanctions database paints a more complete picture of Rauf's footprint in Pakistan. Listed under multiple aliases, Rauf is linked to several addresses across Lahore, including 4 Lake Road, Choburji Dola Khurd, Jinnah Block, and Chamberlain Road. He also held Pakistani passports CM1074131 and A7523531, issued in 2008 and expired in 2013. These details match the details about Rauf given in the database of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department, which maintains a list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list ("SDN List"). With PTI inputs
News18
12-05-2025
- Politics
- News18
'Innocent Man?' PIB Fact Check Exposes Pakistan's False Claim About LeT's Hafiz Abdur Rauf
Last Updated: Rauf was seen in a viral video leading funeral prayers for LeT operatives killed during precision Indian strikes under Operation Sindoor on May 7 The Fact Check Unit of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) on Monday dismissed Pakistan's claim that Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leader Hafiz Abdul Rauf, a US-designated global terrorist, is an 'innocent man." In a post on X titled 'Calling Out Pakistan's Bluff", PIB said Pakistan's Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) had wrongly claimed that Rauf, a senior LeT leader, was just a 'common man." 'Pakistan's DG ISPR claims that LeT terrorist Hafiz Abdur Rauf is an 'Innocent Man'. DG ISPR's 'COMMON MAN" is a Globally Sanctioned Terrorist – clearly visible in the viral terrorist funeral picture," the PIB fact check team wrote. The post added that the identity shared by Pakistan's military matches that of Rauf, who has been part of LeT's senior leadership since at least 1999. 'The identity details shared by DG ISPR is identical to the details of Hafiz Abdur Rauf, a member of LeT's senior leadership since at least 1999 and part of the US Sanctions List," it stated. This comes after Rauf was seen in a viral video leading funeral prayers for LeT operatives killed during precision Indian strikes under Operation Sindoor on May 7. These strikes were carried out to avenge the killing of Indian tourists in Pahalgam by Pakistan-backed terrorists. The video, posted by New York Times columnist Taha Siddiqui, shows Rauf at the funeral alongside other LeT members. Right after the prayers, the crowd can be heard shouting 'Al Jihad, Al Jihad." Rauf has long been associated with Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the front organisation of LeT. Though not related by blood to LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, Rauf has worked closely with him for decades and is part of his core ideological and operational group. The Indian Army, in a press briefing on Sunday, named several Pakistani Army officials who attended the funeral alongside Rauf. Rauf has been designated under UNSC 1267 sanctions, and the US Treasury Department lists him as a key LeT operative. During public events and funerals of LeT operatives, he is often seen in ceremonial or spiritual roles, to present a 'clerical" appearance, though he deep links to the terror group's activities. First Published:
Saba Yemen
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
Humanitarian Coordination Center issues decision banning US crude oil exports
Sana'a (Saba) – The Humanitarian Coordination Center (HOCC) issued a decision yesterday, Friday, banning US crude oil exports, the decision will take effect on May 17, 2025. The Executive Director of the Humanitarian Coordination Center explained in a press statement that the American enemy continues to launch raids on various Yemeni governorates, targeting civilians and civilian objects, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries, including women and children. He said, "Just as the American enemy previously targeted the Ras Issa oil port in Al Hudaydah Governorate on April 17, 2025, targeting civilian facilities, workers, and employees, in a horrific crime that is considered one of the most heinous massacres committed against humanity, in an attempt to besiege the Yemeni people, the Republic of Yemen has the right to respond to the crimes, massacres, and war crimes committed by the American enemy against the Yemeni people, their infrastructure, and their capabilities." He added, "Therefore, a decision has been made to prohibit the export, re-export, transfer, loading, purchase, or sale of U.S. crude oil (HS Code 2709.00) from U.S. ports, whether directly or indirectly, including ship-to-ship transfers (STS), whether in whole or in part, including through third parties." He pointed out that this decision was made based on Law No. (5) of 1445 AH regarding the classification of countries, entities, and individuals hostile to the Republic of Yemen, and the Sanctions List for Perpetrators of Aggression against Yemen or Any Arab or Islamic Country (SR-PAYAIS). The decision also included the possibility of granting exceptions or permits for humanitarian purposes, or for countries and companies that oppose the policies and decisions of the U.S. administration, by submitting a request to Licensing@ This decision will take effect on May 17, 2025, at 00:01 a.m. Sana'a time, which is equivalent to May 16, 2025, at 21:01 p.m. UTC. Whatsapp Telegram Email Print
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First Post
28-04-2025
- Politics
- First Post
Pahalgam terror attack: UN Security Council's cover-up for Lashkar-e-Taiba
Until the UN Security Council finds the courage to speak the names it has already recorded in its own ledgers, the world will continue to watch its marble halls and wonder whether the global watchdog has any bark left or only a convenient, selective silence read more The smoke had hardly cleared from the pine-clad meadow of Baisaran when the United Nations Security Council issued its obligatory press communiqué. 26 holidaymakers, executed for being Hindus, lay dead in Pahalgam; dozens more were maimed. Yet the document that emerged from New York on April 25 read like an anodyne form letter: the Council 'condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir' and urged States to bring the faceless perpetrators to justice. Faceless, because the statement did not dare utter the name of the outfit that had already claimed the slaughter, The Resistance Front (TRF). STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD That omission is no clerical slip. TRF is the latest marketing label of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistani jihad factory that flooded Mumbai with gunmen in 2008, butchered commuters in 2006, and turned the Indian Parliament into a battlefield in 2001. In the UN's own files, LeT sits grimly enshrined as Entity QDe.118 on the ISIL (Da'esh) & Al-Qaida Sanctions List; its emir, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, appears as Individual QDi.263, subject to a global assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo. Every diplomat at headquarters knows those docket numbers. Yet, when the same hydra sprouts a new head and murders tourists in broad daylight, the Council suddenly finds itself tongue-tied. Why? Because the politics of the drafting room eclipsed the morality of the morgue. Islamabad's gambit was simple: erase fingerprints, muddy the crime scene, and convert a clear act of cross-border terror into a shapeless 'incident' in a 'disputed' patch of land. The U.S. negotiators reportedly struck a grotesque compromise—drop both the perpetrator's name and Pakistan's preferred adjective—while China loyally amplified Islamabad's pleas for 'lack of evidence' and an 'independent probe'. The capitulation worked like clockwork. Within hours of the Council's whitewashed statement, TRF performed a carefully scripted pirouette: it declared its earlier claim of responsibility an 'unauthorised message' uploaded by hackers and now blames Indian cyber-warriors for the confusion. Pakistan's foreign-office spokesperson promptly echoed the farce, labelling the massacre a 'false-flag operation'. Thus, a terror brand that the UN already recognises as an LeT proxy was allowed to vanish, as though global proscription were a theatrical costume that can be slipped on or off depending on the diplomatic weather. The dissonance is astounding. On one page of the UN website, TRF's parent organisation is condemned as an Al-Qaida collaborator that hosted bin Laden's foot soldiers in Faisalabad safe houses. On another note, the same institution shrinks from acknowledging LeT's own mouthpiece after it sprays automatic fire into picnicking families. The Council cites Resolution 2610—its flagship legal instrument against terror—yet flinches from naming a Resolution 2610 listee's offspring. That is not merely bureaucratic inertia; it is moral self-harm. Every time the Council wilfully obscures the authors of carnage, it signals to victims that international law is performative rhetoric, not a shield. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD China's fingerprints are etched into this cycle of impunity. Beijing has wielded the 'technical hold' like a stiletto to protect Islamabad's proteges for over a decade—stalling Masood Azhar's listing for four years, blocking Abdul Rauf Azhar, and, as recently as June 2024, vetoing the attempt by India and the United States to add 26/11 operations commander Sajid Mir. Only when global opprobrium became unbearable did Beijing lift its block this January, allowing LeT deputy chief Abdul Rehman Makki to be blacklisted. The pattern is unmistakable: China protects Pakistan's jihadi franchises until the political cost exceeds the strategic dividend, and the Council's consensus rule gives it veto power over the entire sanctions architecture. Apologists for this diplomatic horse-trading like to shrug that a press statement is 'merely symbolic'. Exactly so—symbols are the marrow of counter-terror messaging. When the Council can call out the Balochistan Liberation Army's Majeed Brigade for bombing the Jaffar Express inside Pakistan yet lapses into coy generalities after Pakistan-reared militants butcher Indian tourists, it advertises a hierarchy of victims. It signals to would-be attackers that equally proscribed organisations will face different levels of censure depending on whose blood is shed and which patrons occupy the veto chairs. Had the Council retained even a sliver of conscience, it would have appended three unassailable words, 'The Resistance Front', to its Pahalgam statement. Naming TRF would simply have reminded Islamabad of its Chapter VII obligation to prosecute, or extradite, the murderers it continues to shield. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The hypocrisy corrodes the credibility of multilateralism far beyond South Asia. How can the Council lecture Africa on sanctioning Islamic State offshoots in the Sahel or lambaste Kabul for harbouring Al-Qaida remnants when it chokes on the name of a group it has already blacklisted? How can it demand that smaller states prosecute terror financiers when permanent members indulge their clients' proxies? The answer, whispered in chancery corridors from New Delhi to Nairobi, is that the Council has mutated from a guardian of collective security into a marketplace of vetoes where terror designations are bartered like commodities. Condemnation alone will not resurrect the dead nor mend the limbs of the wounded. But naming the murderer is the first prerequisite of justice, and the United Nations, of all bodies, claims that mantle. When the Council flinches at a name it has already inscribed in the blacklist, it renounces the moral authority that underpins every resolution it passes, from Libya's arms embargo to Haiti's gang sanctions. The parents who packed their children onto ponies for a summer ride did not know the labyrinthine etiquette of press-statement negotiations, and they should not have had to. They were owed something better than a platitude stripped of accountability. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The crimson grass of Pahalgam now bears witness to two insults: the bullets of terrorists and the cowardice of a chamber that pretends not to know who pulled the trigger. Until the Security Council finds the courage to speak the names it has already recorded in its own ledgers, the world will continue to watch its marble halls and wonder whether the global watchdog has any bark left or only a convenient, selective silence. Rahul Pawa is an international criminal lawyer and director of research at New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
