The proverbial Damocles Sword hangs on Pakistan from the FATF, although the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, retaining it on the grey list, last week allowed more time to complete the tasks assigned to the Imran Khan Government. It's a reprieve, not relief.

While the government and a section of Pakistan’s media are in a self-congratulatory mood, the FATF has given till February next year only a narrow window of time and opportunity. This makes the government’s work daunting.

The six remaining tasks from out of the 27 are precisely the most difficult ones. The government cannot complete them without the cooperation of other parties in parliament. But the main opposition parties, having already staged three back-to-back protest rallies, are in a hostile mood. Whatever the issues, the government is up against a Peoples’ Democratic Movement (PDM) that appears to be gaining momentum.

In the prevailing mood, the FATF itself has become a political football. The opposition parties were sore at the way the government pushed through three legislations pertaining to the FATF by holding a joint session after the opposition had refused to cooperate and had defeated them on the floor of the House. Their anger stemmed from the suspicion/belief that in the name of FATF, the government was surreptitiously pushing provisions that could be used to curb the political activity in future. Media reports indicate that even in a joint session, the government succeeded by ensuring ‘absence’ of many opposition lawmakers.

Dealing with the FATF has become a political issue judging from the PPP’s seeking the government’s ‘explanation’ for its ‘failure’ to get the country out of the grey list. Its Senator Sherry Rehman has countered the charge that past regimes had allowed conditions that require FATF to act by claiming that her government had succeeded in getting Pakistan out of several situations that could attract sanctions when the security situation was much worse and terrorist activity was rampant. She gave no details, though. This, she argued, had been done without attributing motives to the government’s critics, as was the present case. She has called the government’s effort a ‘circus’.

The government’s show of jubilation is for the domestic audiences that are being buffeted by its claims and the opposition repost. The official claims are contradicted by leaders of the PDM campaign. Pushing through any FATF-related legislation seems difficult.

Prior to the FATF meeting, the government’s nervousness was palpable in the way it rushed to dismiss as ‘fake’ a news report that ally Saudi Arabia and some other countries had “voted against” Pakistan at the FATF meet.

Dawn newspaper reported: “Some social media posts had claimed on Friday that a few countries, including Afghanistan and India, voted against Pakistan at the FATF plenary and some others, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, abstained from the vote”.

A cautious Khan Government this time on did not flaunt names of China, Turkey and Malaysia. The relief came in the shape of there being no voting and the meeting reaching conclusion by consensus. That there was no voting was claimed as Pakistan’s “diplomatic victory”. Far from it -- the US is in throes of an election and others are too busy fighting off their own devils, including the Coronavirus.

Underscoring seriousness of the task ahead, Dawn (October 25, 2020) said in its editorial: “We have been given a very narrow window of time to achieve the rest of the targets — tougher ones pertaining to law enforcement’s capacity to identify and investigate the “widest range of terrorist-financing activity”. It wants “the investigation and prosecution [to] target designated persons and entities, and those acting on behalf or at the direction of the designated persons or entities”. Further, Pakistan has to demonstrate that terrorist-financing prosecutions result in effective and dissuasive sanctions. We also need to show the world that the provincial and federal authorities are on the same page on enforcing measures”.

It also pointed to the FATF’s expectations from “a country like Pakistan where large parts of the economy operate in the shadows and where law enforcers have little or no training in identifying, investigating and prosecuting financial crimes”. This is both, the ground reality, also an excuse on behalf of the government from a newspaper whose top honcho is in trouble with the government.

How a beleaguered Imran Khan deals with this during Pakistan's winter of discontent will be watched by the world com unity concerned about terrorism and terror financing.