Haqqani Network Officially Designated ‘Terrorists’

Win McNamee/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. State Department today officially named the Haqqani network, a violent Taliban-affiliated militant group based in Pakistan, as a terrorist organization after weeks of deliberation, according to a senior State Department official.

The official told reporters traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that she signed a report to Congress saying that the group, which is believed to have been responsible for several high-profile attacks and kidnappings, “meets the statutory criteria for designation.” Top leaders of the organization had already been designated terrorists by the State and Treasury departments, but this is the first time the entire group has been recognized as such and will be subject to the financial constraints that come with the designation.

The Haqqanis have been accused of launching deadly cross-border attacks in Afghanistan on U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians, including the suicide bombings at Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel last June.

Clinton’s decision comes at the tail end of a 30-day deadline for the designation that was pushed by Congress.

“The Haqqani network is engaged in a reign of terror in Afghanistan,” Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Mike Rogers (Michigan-R.) said in July when the House voted for the designation. “To better protect the lives of U.S. soldiers, now is the time for action, not simply paperwork and talk. There is no good reason that this group has not yet been designated.”

The State Department official’s comments on the designation confirm a report earlier Friday from The New York Times in which a senior administration official said the move “shows that we are using everything we can to put the squeeze on these guys.”

Administration officials were reportedly hesitant to officially call the network a terror organization because it could hurt America’s already icy relationship with Pakistan. The Haqqani network is believed to have close ties to the Pakistani government and its powerful intelligence agency, the ISI.

Congress has been expressing increased frustration with Pakistan’s lack of action against the Haqqanis and weeks before making her decision on the designation, Clinton said it was as if the Pakistani government was “like the guy who keeps poisonous snakes in his backyard convinced they’ll only attack his neighbors.”

“That is not what is happening inside Pakistan. They are losing sovereignty,” she said in June.

In August, senators on the Foreign Relations Committee told Foreign Policy’s The Cable that they were holding up the appointment of Obama administration nominee for the new ambassador to Pakistan, Robert Olson, until they had more detail on how he planned to address the issue.

Olson promised to make the Haqqani network one of his top priorities at his confirmation hearing in July, but several senators told the Cable that they wanted to use Olson’s confirmation as an opportunity to gauge where the administration stood on the Haqqani network.

Last week, Clinton said that she would meet Congress’ deadline on the designation decision, but said the U.S. was already squeezing the Haqqanis.

“We are drying up their resources. We are targeting their military and intelligence personnel. We are pressing the Pakistanis to step up their own efforts,” she said.

A recent report on the Haqqani network from West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center described the group as a sly organization happy to “play second fiddle” to other terror groups and leaders in order to keep a low profile on the international stage.

“For much of the last decade, this practice succeeded in decreasing the visibility of the network; prior to 2008, there was scant media reporting on the Haqqanis as constituting a distinct or significant entity,” the report says. “The capacity of Haqqani leaders to form strategic alliances, such as those with al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and the ISI, have served to increase the network’s resiliency, as well as their stature within the community.”

“Community members in [Pakistan’s northern border region] interviewed for this project described the Haqqanis as virtually untouchable,” the July 2012 report says.

A recent drone strike may have called that claim into question, however, as it reportedly took out Badruddin Haqqani, a key commander in the group and son of the Haqqani network’s founder, Jalaladin Haqqani.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio