Why China shields Pak based terrorists from global terrorist tag?

Chinese indifference to Indian national security concerns were reiterated at the UN Security Council this month when it put a hold on listing Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)’s de facto leader Abdul Rauf Asghar Alvi, younger brother of global terrorist Masood Azhar Alvi, on the 1267 Taliban and Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee list.

In June this year, China again put a hold on technical grounds on list of Abdul Rahman Makki, head of Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)’s political affairs department and chief fund raiser of Muridke based terror factory. Makki is brother-in-law of LeT’s chief and global terrorist Hafiz Saeed and the head of so-called foreign affairs department of the transnational terrorist group.

Simply put, Makki gets dollar funding from West Asian countries in the name of propagating Islam and misuses that to weaponize radicalized Muslims to targeting primarily India, Indian interests in Afghanistan and the US.

Among more than 40 terror groups housed in Pakistan, LeT and JeM are family run terror empires which have the support of Rawalpindi and Pakistani deep state and do contract hits on the direction of Rawalpindi GHQ in return for shelter, fund collection and freedom to operate in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

JeM’s terror empire is based in Bahawalpur and is run by Masood Azhar with Rauf Asghar handling the entire operations of the transnational terrorist group. Rauf Asghar is the brain behind the 2016 Pathankot air base attack and the 2019 Pulwana attack.

He is the principal orchestrator of terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir at the instance of India hater Masood Azhar, who wants revenge for the special treatment meted out to him by the Indian security forces after he was arrested outside Srinagar in 1994. Masood Azhar was placed on 1267 list on May 1, 2019, after China blocked the proposal no less than four times. It was quite evident during the listing of Masood Azhar that instructions for lifting the hold on the JeM chief came right from the top of Chinese leadership.

Fact is that while Pakistan has informed the global financial terror watchdog FATF that they cannot trace Masood in Pakistan, the terror kingpin is in his madrassa in Pakistan Punjab.

As a reward for Pakistan to keep India engaged in regional battles, China also objected to listing of LeT’s intelligence chief Azam Cheema, who under the terror group operational commander Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi, trained the 26/11 attackers as well as those who attacked Indian hinterland before Mumbai massacre. But this is not all.

China also objected to listing of Mohamed Yusuf Shah alias Syed Salahuddin, who heads the Hizbul Mujahideen, a Pakistan based terrorist group whose primary focus is Jammu and Kashmir, in 2015. For getting shelter in Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) often uses Salahuddin to spread terror among the local populace in the Valley and supports merger of the UT with Pakistan.

While the US has blacked listed all above on charges of terrorism in the past decade and before, China is in fact supporting terror against India by placing hurdles before the 1267 committee and shielding the mass murderers from facing justice.

The quid pro quo is that Pakistan does not utter a word against Uighur Sunni Muslim oppression by the Communist Party of China in restive Xinjiang province. Masood Azhar was placed on the 1267 list nearly a decade after his name was put up before the sanctions committee in 2010.