More than two decades after Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) first appeared on global terror watchlists, the international community can no longer treat paperwork as evidence of genuine counterterrorism action — that is the central conclusion of a recent report by US-based policy journal Fair Observer. The real test, the report argues, is whether globally designated terrorist leaders are apprehended and prosecuted, their operational infrastructure dismantled, and their networks prevented from regrouping.

The Red Book Contradiction

At the heart of the report is what it calls an 'almost surreal' detail inside Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) 2026 'Red Book' of most-wanted terrorists. Masood Azhar, founder and sitting leader of the anti-India Salafi-Jihadist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed, appears in the document as expected — complete with a description of his crimes and a reward for information leading to his arrest. That bounty, according to the report, has climbed from five million Pakistani rupees in 2021 to seven million today.

Critically, the Red Book does not stop at listing Azhar as a fugitive. It also identifies his residence in the Kausar Colony area of Bahawalpur, in Pakistan's Punjab province, and links him to three Counter Terrorism Department cases registered in Punjab between 2020 and 2021. The report asks the obvious question: if Pakistani authorities know where Azhar lives, why has he still not been arrested?

US Treasury and the Bahawalpur Open Secret

Pakistan's official acknowledgement of Azhar's location is not an isolated disclosure. According to the report, the US Treasury Department has for years independently linked Azhar to the same Kausar Colony neighbourhood in Bahawalpur. JeM's extensive and long-standing presence in the city has, the report notes, remained an open secret in policy circles well before India's military strikes in May 2025.

Those strikes, launched in response to the deadly Pahalgam terror attack, targeted JeM's headquarters at the Markaz Subhan Allah complex in Bahawalpur. Azhar subsequently acknowledged that 10 members of his family were killed in the operation — a detail the Fair Observer report highlights as further evidence of the group's continued operational presence in a known location.

FATF Scrutiny and Pakistan's Compliance Record

Pakistan's alleged tolerance of terrorist infrastructure has drawn sustained scrutiny from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental body established by the G7 in 1989 to counter money laundering and terrorist financing. In June 2018, FATF placed Pakistan on its Grey List — formally designated 'Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring' — citing persistent concerns about terrorist financing. The designation placed severe pressure on Pakistan's already fragile economy. Pakistan exited the Grey List in October 2022 after submitting a series of compliance commitments.

The Fair Observer report notes that the FATF plenary is scheduled for Paris from 26 to 30 October 2026. While the body has not publicly signalled a specific Grey List decision at that session — and the report is careful not to prejudge the outcome — it emphasises that Pakistan's counterterrorism compliance record remains the central issue before the forum.

State Complicity: Allegations Pakistan Cannot Dismiss

The report argues that decades of documented links between elements of Pakistan's security establishment and designated terror groups have made accusations of state-enabled terrorism structurally difficult to dismiss. Critics argue that the FIA's Red Book, by simultaneously listing Azhar as a wanted fugitive and publishing his residential address, is a microcosm of that contradiction: an apparatus that performs counterterrorism compliance without delivering its substance.

With the FATF plenary days away and global scrutiny intensifying, the pressure on Islamabad to move from process to outcome is unlikely to ease.