China recently blocked a joint attempt by the U.S. and India to have the U.N. Security Council recognize a Pakistan-based terrorist named Abdul Rehman Makki as a “global terrorist,” the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported on Friday.
“New Delhi and Washington had put a joint proposal to designate Makki as a global terrorist under the 1267 ISIL and al-Qaida Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council but Beijing placed a hold on this proposal at the last minute [sic],” PTI reported on June 17.
According to the Indian news agency, China wielded its right to veto the proposal as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. The global governing body’s five permanent members are China, Russia, France, the U.S., and the United Kingdom.
“[I]f any one of the five permanent members cast a negative vote in the 15-member Security Council, the resolution or decision would not be approved,” the U.N. states on its website.
The U.S. and India’s failed efforts to have Makki recognized as a global terrorist by the United Nations come over a decade after the U.S. Treasury Department officially labeled the Pakistani national as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in November 2010.
Washington assigned this title to Makki as part of its official process of imposing financial sanctions on the individual.
File/Abdul Rehman Makki addresses the Kashmir solidarity day rally in Lahore on February 5, 2012. (Arif Ali/AFP via Getty Images)
The U.S. Treasury Department said in a press release at the time that it targeted Makki’s finances because he served as a leader of Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LET), a Pakistan-based terror organization. Makki generally “acted on behalf of LET” while serving as the head of its “political affairs department,” according to the statement.
The U.N. Security Council added Lashkar-e Tayyiba to its “ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions List” in 2005 after finding that the group was “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, ‘on behalf or in support of’, ‘supplying, selling or transferring arms and related material to’ or ‘otherwise supporting acts or activities of’ Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden and the Taliban.”
“ISIL (Da’esh)” is an international terrorist organization alternatively known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). “Al-Qaida,” or Al-Qaeda, is a multinational terror network known in the U.S. mainly for perpetrating a series of attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001.
“Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) is a Pakistan-based organization which has engaged in terrorist activity and supported listed individuals and entities, including Al-Qaida and Usama bin Laden (deceased),” according to the United Nations’s website.
File/Abdul Rehman Makki addresses a protest against the printing of satirical sketches of the Prophet Muhammad by French magazine Charlie Hebdo, in Islamabad on January 16, 2015. (FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP via Getty Images)
“LeT has conducted numerous terrorist operations against military and civilian targets since 1993, including the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, which killed approximately 164 persons and injured hundreds more,” the U.N. states.
“LeT has also been implicated in the July 2006 attack on multiple Mumbai commuter trains, the December 2001 attack against the Indian Parliament […] and attacks in New Delhi in October 2005 and in Bangalore in December 2005, among others. LeT is also active in Afghanistan and other Asian countries,” the U.N. details.
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