Pakistan remains in FATF’s grey list, but EU keeps funding terror state

A few minutes after the global terror-financing watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), announced keeping Pakistan on grey list Friday night, European Parliament member Dominique Bilde tweeted: "While the FATF has just kept #Pakistan on its grey list, especially in terms of financing #terrorism, will the European Union FINALLY withdraw from this country the millions of euros in aid it receives?"

A member of the National Rally party, Bilde is obviously concerned with the Islamist surge and the huge influx of Pakistani jihadists into the European Union member states. "In September, a Pakistani Islamist attacked people in Paris with a chopper, receiving congratulations from his father in Pakistan. In June, the Prime Minister of Pakistan called Bin Laden a ‘martyr.’ And the best part: in 6 years, the EU has paid 603 million pounds to this country!" a bit flummoxed Bilde had told the European Parliament earlier this week.
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As a member of the European Parliament delegation with Bosnia and Herzegovina, the French MEP, in a plenary session Thursday, had once again stressed the inherent risks involved in pouring billions into a country where religious extremism seems to be promoted in the highest spheres of the state.

"Regarding the sale of passports and visas, I alerted to the suspicions weighing on Pakistan. This country, supported by Europe to the tune of 4 billion euros since 2014, is at the heart of the traffic of migrants and terrorism, Islamists worldwide! We have seen, Pakistan are the leaders in fake passports and fake documents," said Bilde.

<img class="wp-image-18630 size-full" src="https://indianarrative.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/pakistan-fatf-grey-list-european-union-1.jpg" alt="Pakistan remains in FATF’s grey list, but EU keeps funding terror state" width="960" height="560" /> EU member: There are inherent risks involved in pouring billions into Pakistan where religious extremism seems to be promoted in the highest spheres of the state

IndiaNarrative.com had in June <a href="https://indianarrative.com/world/pakistan-routing-terror-to-europe-via-bosnia-3085.html">reported</a> about how Bosnia's Ministry of Security — while deporting more than 3,000 illegal migrants from Pakistan, who use the region as a backdoor to sneak into the European Union (EU) — uncovered two terrorists after detailed fingerprint analysis.

However, Bilde isn't the first—and certainly not the last—to highlight the frauds which originate in the Pakistani deep state. In 2012, the then British High Commissioner in Islamabad, Adam Thomson, had famously said that Pakistan was the world leader in visa and passport fraud.
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"You are world leaders in the visa fraud business which is why we have to check very scrupulously every single application, every single passport, every single document," Thomson had said while detailing how the British continue to weed out thousands of such documents.

His words seemed to have been forgotten until last month's shocking meat cleaver attack by a Pakistan-born teenager outside Charlie Hebdo's former offices in Paris woke many Europeans from their slumber. It was followed by another incident, the fifth in France this year, involving a teenager of Chechen origin.

Offering his tribute to Samuel Paty, a French teacher who was beheaded by an Islamist radical Abdullakh Anzorov on the streets of the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in broad daylight on October 20, President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday, "He was killed because the Islamists want our future. They know that with quiet heroes like him, they will never have it."

That the situation in France is getting out of control was made quite clear by country's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin who said that as many as 32 such attacks, "almost one a month", have been prevented in the last three years.

"We are in a very critical situation, we are in a war against Islamic terrorism and we may have put it back a little bit collectively," he commented while stating that France had to tackle the "enemy within."
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Statements and online petitions/campaigns aside, the bigger question is that whether Europe is really ready to tackle the threat of radical Islam? An Iraqi archbishop says Europe is certainly not prepared and is "naive" about terrorism.

"I said it in the European Parliament that I am more afraid for Europe than I am for Iraq… One would have to be short-sighted not to see that Europe is naive in the face of terrorism and uncontrolled and unattended immigration," Najeeb Michaeel Moussa, the archbishop of Mosul, a finalist of the 2020 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought proposed by Identity and Democracy group at the European Parliament, said in an interview to the European Post.

Moussa said that Europe is becoming the sick child of the modern world because it is moving away from its faith and its cultural and religious roots and the vacuum left in the midst of the secular progressive era is leaving the continent vulnerable to wayward movements and ideologies.

"In Europe, you neglect the importance of your treasures, your cultures, your civilization. And you sometimes give way to fundamentalist or Salafist movements that gradually impose their ideologies on those around them, to become bearers of hatred and disrespect for the countries that welcome them," he said in the <a href="http://europeanpost.co/archbishop-of-mosul-i-am-more-afraid-for-europe-than-i-am-for-iraq/">interview</a>.

Whatever may be the reason, with time fast running out, the European Union certainly needs to gets it act together. Experts reckon that stopping funding to terror states like Pakistan should certainly be the next step.

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