Following the recent news of the alleged drone attack by US in Pakistan killing a top commander of the Haqqani network and two of his associates, US has now administered sanctions against four Taliban leaders and two commanders of the Haqqani network.
This action supports the president’s South Asia strategy by disrupting these terrorist organizations and publicly exposing individuals who facilitate their activities,” said Sigal Mandelker, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence this Thursday.
The six leaders include four Taliban leaders include Abdul Samad Sani, Abdul Qadeer Basir, Abdul Baseer, Hafiz Mohammed Popalzai, and Maulawi Inayatullah and two Haqqani network leaders as Faqir Muhammad and Gula Khan Hamidi all of whom live in Afghanistan. Abdul Samad Sani, who has been Taliban deputy finance minister and was also Afghanistan’s Central Bank governor when the Taliban ruled the country.
Three of the four Taliban officials sanctioned have previously worked under the head of the Taliban Finance Commission, Gul Agha Ishakzai. Under his direction they collected funds from drug traffickers, precious stone sales, hostage ransoms and donors to be distributed to Taliban fighters, the Treasury said.A fourth, Maulawi Inayatullah, worked as Taliban military affairs official responsible as recently as 2016 for attacks on Afghan and Coalition forces in Kabul. The other two from the Haqqani network– Faqir Muhammad and Gula Khan Hamidi were said to help the network raise and smuggle money to help terrorists travel to the Middle East and ahead.
According to Voice of America, the six have been involved in attacking U.S.-led coalition forces, smuggling and financing terrorists and all property that they have in the United States will be frozen, and Americans are barred from doing business with them.
The US has also called upon Pakistan to help out to control and put a barrier to the financing of these terrorist organizations. “The Pakistani government must work with us to deny the Taliban and the Haqqani network sanctuary and to aggressively target their terrorist financing,” Sigal Mandelker said.
The US also has stopped security assistance to the Pakistani military until it takes “decisive action” against the Taliban and Haqqani network.