Global Policy Forum

By Syed Talat Hussain

The UN Security Council is likely to approve this month a mechanism for effective monitoring and enforcement of sanctions against the Taliban, highly-placed diplomatic sources told Dawn.

These sources indicated that there was "considerable consensus on strengthening the means to make the Taliban comply with the UN sanctions under Resolution 1333" and in this regard the Security Council was likely to "approve the proposals for monitoring of the embargo against the Taliban".

This mechanism, as recommended by the five-member committee of experts in its report last month, entailed creation of an Office for Sanctions Monitoring and Coordination, Afghanistan. This office will have a Director Chief of Operations and Specialist Officers dealing with arms embargo, counter-terrorism, drugs financing and money laundering issues and legislation and legal support.

This Office will have Sanctions Enforcement Support teams in Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and Pakistan. Each of this team will have representatives of Customs, Border Security and Counter-terrorism forces of the host country. The Director of the Office will also interact and exchange information with other agencies and organizations around the world like Interpol, Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention etc.

Sources said that this mechanism will also serve the purpose of pursuing the closure of the "terrorist training camps in the Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan".Mullah Umar, the supreme leader of the Taliban, has already issued a stern warning to the international community that all mechanisms deployed on Afghanistan's border for monitoring will be considered acts of aggression against the pride and dignity of the Afghans. He has equated such deployments with enemy deployment on war front. Diplomatic sources however dismiss such warnings as "non-issues".