Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday she told Congress she’s designating the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network as a foreign terrorist organization.
The move may complicate relations between Washington and Islamabad, which U.S. officials say has ties to the group. Clinton said she made the decision in accordance with legislation signed into law Aug. 10 that gave the department until Sunday to decide whether the Haqqani Network met the criteria for designation.
The designation bars anyone from knowingly supporting or doing business with anyone in the Haqqani Network, and it freezes all U.S. property the group has any ownership interest in.
“These actions follow a series of other steps that the U.S. government already has taken against the Haqqanis,” Clinton said in a statement.
Dubbed “the Sopranos of the Afghanistan war” in a New York Times profile last year, the group has been tied to some of the deadliest attacks in the region. It built an empire out of kidnapping, extortion, smuggling and trucking, the profile said.
But the U.S. had until Friday targeted individual members with sanctions, rather than go after the network as a whole.
Given the regular contact that Pakistan’s intelligence service has with it, designating the Haqqani Network as a foreign terror organization could carry the implication that Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism because of its support for the group, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Some officials cited by the Journal, mainly at the State Department, have argued in the past that designating the Haqqani Network would prevent the U.S. from entering into negotiations that would end the Afghan war. Those officials said the designation is merely symbolic because many of the network’s known leaders are already under sanctions from the Treasury and State Departments.
But military leaders in Afghanistan and at the Pentagon, according to the Journal report, urged for the designation to increase pressure on the group and on Islamabad.
Last week, American officials said Badruddin Haqqani, a senior member, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Badruddin was placed under U.S. sanctions in May 2011 for being an operational commander for the group.
Watch State Department Dubs Haqqani Network Terrorists on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
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