LeT receives adequate funding despite sanctions: India tells UN

United Nations, Dec 20: India has said that terror groups like LeT do not "live on love and fresh air", expressing regret that they receive funds despite being slapped with sanctions by the UN, as the world body reaffirmed the need to cut the monetary lifeline of terrorists.

India expressed concern that financing to terror groups is supplemented by illegal resources generated through drug trafficking, piracy, kidnapping for ransom and extortion even though the terror organisations are placed on the Council's sanctions list and are subject to travel bans, freezing of assets and an arms embargo.

Listing of a terror group should cut off the "lifeline that sustains terrorism. This, unfortunately, does not always happen," India's Acting Permanent Representative to the UN Bhagwant Bishnoi said in an open debate in the Council on terrorism and cross-border crime.

He said the LeT was able to orchestrate an attack on the Indian Consulate in Heart, Afghanistan in May this year despite being a listed organisation.

"Lashker-e-Taiba obviously does not live on love and fresh air. They have more than adequate funding. Regrettably, there seems to be little that the Council's Sanction Committees can do about such violations of the sanction regime. This is area which would benefit from consideration by the Council," he said.

He said apart from generating resources, illicit activities also create conditions for the growth and proliferation of terrorist networks.

He cited the example of the revenue that is generated from poppy cultivation in Afghanistan that has more often than not found its way to the Taliban and other terrorist network in the war-torn country.

Amid a proliferation of well-funded and well-organised transnational criminal activities, the Council adopted a resolution spotlighting its concern over the ties between cross-border crime and terrorism and called for international action to prevent terrorists from benefiting from transnational organised crime, through securing borders and prosecuting illicit networks.

Recalling the Peshawar school massacre that left 148 people dead, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said the world had been reminded yet again this week "why we must not tire in our efforts to counter terrorism, following the despicable attack on a school in Pakistan by the Taliban."

He said terror groups like Boko Haram, Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and their "sinister peers" make it abundantly clear that the pervasive synergies between terrorism and cross-border crimes foster conflicts, prevent their resolution and increase the chance of relapse.

He said that efforts to combat terrorism will not bear fruit unless the international community combines law enforcement actions with measures to strengthen good governance, rule of law and human rights.

PTI