Taliban Sanction Committee: Post a visit by the group negotiator of Taliban to Pakistan, India has firmed up its decision to chair a Taliban sanction committee; also known as the 1988 sanctions committee. 

Video grabs were unearth showing a Taliban delegation led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar visiting terror training camps on Pakistani soil and meeting injured fighters at a hospital in Karachi. In one such video, the chief negotiator Baradar has admitted that all their peace negotiations happen in consultation with its leadership and clerics’ council based in Pakistan.

India has held Pakistan responsible for being the breeding ground for extremist and jihadi groups like Al-Qaeda and Taliban too. In 2022, India would chair three significant UN sanction committees. These include the Taliban Sanction Committee, the counter terrorism committee and the Libya Sanctions Committee. 

This comes because of India joining the UN as a non-permanent member in the year 2021-22. Referring to the counter-terrorism committee, Indian envoy to the United Nations, Mr. T.S. Tirumurti noted that the panel was formed in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and that India had led it during its last stint as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council during 2011-12 too.

India would chair the counter-terrorism committee on the 75th anniversary of the country’s independence, confirmed Tirumurti. Without naming Pakistan, India has shown its strong stance against neighbouring nations that are encouraging and supporting terrorism related activities. 

The Libya sanctions committee, also known as the 1970 sanctions committee, is a “very important subsidiary body” of the Security Council that implements a sanctions regime, including a two-way arms embargo, assets freeze, travel ban and measures to prevent illicit export of petroleum, Tirumurti said.

India will chair this committee at a “critical juncture, when there is international focus on Libya and on the peace process” in that country, he added.