India targets Pakistan over terrorism, points out 9/11 kingpins were found housed, not in caves or badlands

Targeting Pakistan’s terrorist-harbouring tendencies at the UN Security Council, India said the "architects" of the 9/11 attacks were not hiding in "caves or badlands," but had long evaded detection. The same "permissive environment" continues to support terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed today, India's Permanent Representative Harish Parvathaneni said.

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting, Harish Parvathaneni invoked the history of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He said al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were eventually found in settled communities rather than remote hideouts.

"The international community supported the global campaign to counter terrorism in the wake of 9/11. Let us not forget, however, that al-Qaeda's terror ecosystem established its strategic depth beyond Afghanistan through its affiliates," Parvathaneni said on Wednesday.

"The leaders of al-Qaeda who conceived and directed these 9/11 attacks did not escape justice in the wilderness of some ungoverned frontier," Parvathaneni said.

Mohammed, "the principal architect of the operation, was found sheltering in an ordinary residential house. Ramzi Binalshibh, who coordinated the hijacker cell after being denied a visa to join them, was sheltering in an urban centre," he said.

Senior al-Qaeda operative Walid bin Attash, who helped select and prepare several hijackers, was captured separately. Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a key financial and logistical facilitator of the 9/11 operation, was captured under similar circumstances, he added.

"In each case, these were not fugitives hiding in caves or badlands; they were men who had long evaded detection. Draining this swamp that provided an enabling environment for such monsters of humankind to prosper is important," Parvathaneni said, in a thinly veiled reference to Pakistan.

He said that "the same permissive environment that sheltered the architects of 9/11 has, in the years since, continued to provide space, support, and impunity to affiliates of al-Qaeda such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed and their like, acquiring different identities to escape this Council's sanctions framework and whose leadership and terror training infrastructure have been shielded from consequence."

"The international community must join hands to address the continuity of such sanctuary to ensure that more such individuals are not thrust upon any country or its citizens and no one loses family and loved ones," he said.

India reaffirmed that returns must be voluntary, safe, and dignified, and reintegration should receive sustained international support. To this end, India is cooperating with UN agencies and Afghan authorities to make provisions for housing, food, and other essential items to ease the immense pain and hardship the returnees are suffering.

India said it also strongly condemns the "trade and transit terror inflicted" on Afghanistan in violation of UN declarations on Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs), WTO norms, provisions of the UN Charter and international law, and the tenets of basic human compassion.