IN recent years, Pakistan has taken many steps to combat organised crime (OC); resultantly, it was taken off the FATF grey list in 2022. However, it remains on the FATF’s ‘enhanced follow-up’ list in order to assess the sustained, on-the-ground implementation of its anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) steps.

Thus, our current status with the FATF requires us continuously to assess the implementation and effectiveness of our ongoing efforts against OC.

Tackling OC can be divided into two broad areas, ie, targeting criminality (criminal markets and actors) and strengthening society’s resilience against OC. While the first area focuses on intelligence, law enforcement and punitive measures, the second centres on addressing the contextual factors that provide an environment conducive to OC. This is the model followed by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime in its successive Global Organised Crime Indices (GOCI). While not infallible, these global indices serve at least as rough-and-ready comparative assessments across different fields.

In its latest GOCI, issued in 2025, Pakistan has been placed in 45th position out of 193 countries, ie, in the category of countries with high vulnerability to OC and low resilience to combat it. That is a grave indictment of Pakistan’s efforts. It indicates that despite our ongoing policies, we not only remain extremely vulnerable to OC, but our will or capability to reduce the contextual factors sustaining it also remains very weak. This calls for a fundamental review of the balance between targeting criminality and strengthening resilience, which should complement each other.

Pakistan is........

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