TalibanSwatter
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US is going to investigate gulf funding sources.
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Taliban Funding
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TalibanSwatter
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Gulf funding for Taliban is primarily alluding to Saudi petrodollars for the most part.....
Daily Times - Site Edition Saturday, August 01, 2009
ANALYSIS: Gulf excess —Rafia Zakaria
“We need slaves to build monuments,” says an Iraqi engineer living in Abu Dhabi to a reporter from the Guardian. In the published report he goes to add that he would never use the metro if it wasn’t segregated since “we would never sit next to Pakistanis and Indians because of their smell”.
The dismal condition of Pakistani labourers in the Gulf States is well known and the above statements are merely reflections of the deep-seeded and overtly racist attitudes of Arabs in the Gulf and otherwise towards Pakistanis.
The same Guardian report also details how Pakistani slave labourers work up to eighteen hours a day and often live twenty to a room without any ventilation and with only a single bathroom for several hundred people. Several do not see their families for four to ten year periods, unable to afford the airfare home and many die on the job.
Without any insurance scheme families are often not notified of deaths for months and the only compensation available to them is through an underground system through which other workers donate thirty dirham each which is then collected and donated. The strictly segregated society means that the rich Arabs never come across the lowly Pakistani workers who build their roads, clean their floors and drive their cars.
But in recent years, the oil-rich barons of the Gulf have found a new use for slave labour that goes beyond cleaning bathrooms and picking trash off the streets of Dubai. A recent statement issued by Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke in Brussels revealed that the Taliban are being funded by individuals from the Gulf States. Secretary Holbrooke said: “The Taliban receive more funding from the Gulf States than they do from the narcotics trade”.
As has been reported by several Pakistani newspapers, this means that the sources of foreign funding for the Taliban are greater than the approximate USD100 million they receive from the narcotics trade based on poppy cultivation inside Afghanistan.
While Holbrooke was careful to note that the money is not coming from governments but rather from individuals, his statement, based on credible reports tracing wire transfers from the region, illustrates a new use that rich Gulf Arabs have found for expendable Pakistani lives.
Similar to the onerous burden of cleaning one’s own bathrooms, or drilling one’s own oil or building one’s own monuments, the task of fighting one’s own holy war has proven to be far too burdensome for Arabs intoxicated with the seemingly never-ending largesse of a resource-fuelled economy. Smelly Pakistanis, the Arabs have discovered, are not only good enough to build crass monuments to consumerism but also to fight misguided holy wars that destroy nations and eviscerate thousands of innocent lives.
Holbrooke’s statement is not the only basis for believing that the Taliban are receiving support from the Gulf States. In May of this year, the United Nations sent out an international appeal for aid for the nearly 2 million people displaced by the fighting in the tribal areas and the NWFP. While the US has pledged USD320 million for the IDPs and the EU has pledged up to USD121 million, no significant pledges have been made from the Gulf States.
This strange dichotomy in which our supposed Muslim brethren have turned their back on the suffering of the people of Swat, Buner and Dir makes far more sense in light of new information that illustrates that in picking sides, rich sheikhs from the Gulf have chosen to place their bets with the Taliban rather than with the Pakistani soldiers fighting them.
Pakistanis themselves, mired in denial and ever-ready to engage in the pantomime of pretending to be Arab, are inured to this reality of Gulf-Arab racism. Ironically, the standards they expect non-Muslim countries like the United States and the European Union to uphold in terms of equal employment, egalitarian laws and freedom of expression are all abandoned when it comes to the assessment of Gulf Arab nations. No attention is given for example to the Arabs’ discriminatory employment practices that pay a Pakistani a fraction of what is paid to a European citizen for the same engineering job.
Some workers make as little as 400 dirhams a month, barely able to afford meals while surrounded by unimaginable excess. Even less emphasis is received by the condescending and racist attitudes of Gulf law enforcement authorities that regularly detain immigrant workers without any legal process and routinely beat and abuse them.
All this injustice, perhaps because it is committed by fellow Muslims, who make a great pretence at religious devotion, is somehow unthinkingly and unquestioningly forgiven. The fact that such discrimination overtly and blatantly flouts any minimal allegiance to the concept of the Islamic ummah is never even considered.
This latest news presents an urgent challenge to the apathy of those Pakistanis unwilling to acknowledge the reality of Gulf-Arab discrimination and disdain toward South Asians. The fact that Gulf sheikhs are contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban who are bombing schools, marauding villages and devastating the economy and infrastructure of our nation while shutting their coffers to the IDPs languishing in tents should irk even the most minimal nationalist.
More pressingly, it should expose the duplicity of our Gulf Arab overlords who, while freely engaging in debaucheries behind their castle walls now wish to use the Taliban to impose a virulent and dogmatic form of Islam on the poor smelly Pakistanis.
Sending money to fuel a war that is depleting Pakistan’s already meagre resources, turning young men and boys into human bombs and transforming Pakistani cities into battlegrounds exposes their desire to condemn Pakistan into oblivion.
Daily Times - Site Edition Saturday, August 01, 2009
ANALYSIS: Gulf excess —Rafia Zakaria
“We need slaves to build monuments,” says an Iraqi engineer living in Abu Dhabi to a reporter from the Guardian. In the published report he goes to add that he would never use the metro if it wasn’t segregated since “we would never sit next to Pakistanis and Indians because of their smell”.
The dismal condition of Pakistani labourers in the Gulf States is well known and the above statements are merely reflections of the deep-seeded and overtly racist attitudes of Arabs in the Gulf and otherwise towards Pakistanis.
The same Guardian report also details how Pakistani slave labourers work up to eighteen hours a day and often live twenty to a room without any ventilation and with only a single bathroom for several hundred people. Several do not see their families for four to ten year periods, unable to afford the airfare home and many die on the job.
Without any insurance scheme families are often not notified of deaths for months and the only compensation available to them is through an underground system through which other workers donate thirty dirham each which is then collected and donated. The strictly segregated society means that the rich Arabs never come across the lowly Pakistani workers who build their roads, clean their floors and drive their cars.
But in recent years, the oil-rich barons of the Gulf have found a new use for slave labour that goes beyond cleaning bathrooms and picking trash off the streets of Dubai. A recent statement issued by Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke in Brussels revealed that the Taliban are being funded by individuals from the Gulf States. Secretary Holbrooke said: “The Taliban receive more funding from the Gulf States than they do from the narcotics trade”.
As has been reported by several Pakistani newspapers, this means that the sources of foreign funding for the Taliban are greater than the approximate USD100 million they receive from the narcotics trade based on poppy cultivation inside Afghanistan.
While Holbrooke was careful to note that the money is not coming from governments but rather from individuals, his statement, based on credible reports tracing wire transfers from the region, illustrates a new use that rich Gulf Arabs have found for expendable Pakistani lives.
Similar to the onerous burden of cleaning one’s own bathrooms, or drilling one’s own oil or building one’s own monuments, the task of fighting one’s own holy war has proven to be far too burdensome for Arabs intoxicated with the seemingly never-ending largesse of a resource-fuelled economy. Smelly Pakistanis, the Arabs have discovered, are not only good enough to build crass monuments to consumerism but also to fight misguided holy wars that destroy nations and eviscerate thousands of innocent lives.
Holbrooke’s statement is not the only basis for believing that the Taliban are receiving support from the Gulf States. In May of this year, the United Nations sent out an international appeal for aid for the nearly 2 million people displaced by the fighting in the tribal areas and the NWFP. While the US has pledged USD320 million for the IDPs and the EU has pledged up to USD121 million, no significant pledges have been made from the Gulf States.
This strange dichotomy in which our supposed Muslim brethren have turned their back on the suffering of the people of Swat, Buner and Dir makes far more sense in light of new information that illustrates that in picking sides, rich sheikhs from the Gulf have chosen to place their bets with the Taliban rather than with the Pakistani soldiers fighting them.
Pakistanis themselves, mired in denial and ever-ready to engage in the pantomime of pretending to be Arab, are inured to this reality of Gulf-Arab racism. Ironically, the standards they expect non-Muslim countries like the United States and the European Union to uphold in terms of equal employment, egalitarian laws and freedom of expression are all abandoned when it comes to the assessment of Gulf Arab nations. No attention is given for example to the Arabs’ discriminatory employment practices that pay a Pakistani a fraction of what is paid to a European citizen for the same engineering job.
Some workers make as little as 400 dirhams a month, barely able to afford meals while surrounded by unimaginable excess. Even less emphasis is received by the condescending and racist attitudes of Gulf law enforcement authorities that regularly detain immigrant workers without any legal process and routinely beat and abuse them.
All this injustice, perhaps because it is committed by fellow Muslims, who make a great pretence at religious devotion, is somehow unthinkingly and unquestioningly forgiven. The fact that such discrimination overtly and blatantly flouts any minimal allegiance to the concept of the Islamic ummah is never even considered.
This latest news presents an urgent challenge to the apathy of those Pakistanis unwilling to acknowledge the reality of Gulf-Arab discrimination and disdain toward South Asians. The fact that Gulf sheikhs are contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban who are bombing schools, marauding villages and devastating the economy and infrastructure of our nation while shutting their coffers to the IDPs languishing in tents should irk even the most minimal nationalist.
More pressingly, it should expose the duplicity of our Gulf Arab overlords who, while freely engaging in debaucheries behind their castle walls now wish to use the Taliban to impose a virulent and dogmatic form of Islam on the poor smelly Pakistanis.
Sending money to fuel a war that is depleting Pakistan’s already meagre resources, turning young men and boys into human bombs and transforming Pakistani cities into battlegrounds exposes their desire to condemn Pakistan into oblivion.
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Thomas
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Don't think any one said drugs was the only source. But for a movement that supposedly is based on Islamic principles yet deals in drugs. It doesn't make them any different then their Arab Muslim brothers does it? yet there is all this support for them. Which I guess makes all the supporters hypocrites to right? and no I am not arguing against what you say. but merely noticing elements of what the article points out.
H2O3C4Nitrogen
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Taliban can’t be defeated if drug money continues
Wednesday, 12 Aug, 2009 | 05:05 AM PST |
A frequent target of accusations of drug dealing is Ahmed Wali Karzai (above), the powerful head of the Kandahar Provincial Council and one of President Karzai’s brothers, says the report.
WASHINGTON: Senior US military and civilian officials believe the Taliban cannot be defeated and good government in Afghanistan cannot be established without cutting off the money generated by Afghanistan’s opium industry, says a US Senate report released on Tuesday.
The report notes that the illegal Afghan drug industry supplies more than 90 per cent of the world’s heroin and generates an estimated $3 billion a year in profits.
The report also includes, what it describes as ‘an overdue acknowledgement’, that ‘the drug situation has deteriorated sharply under the stewardship of the government of President Hamid Karzai, the United States and Nato-led International Security Assistance Force.’
The report titled ‘Afghanistan’s Narco War: Breaking the Link between drug traffickers and insurgents,’ was issued by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, examining the new US counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan.
The report points out that in 2004 and 2005 the US helped negotiate an agreement for aerial spraying in southern Afghanistan. President Karzai agreed tentatively to a pilot project.
But the Afghan cabinet rejected the idea outright, banning all forms of aerial spraying. ‘Some of them were protecting the source of their own wealth,’ the report quotes a State Department official, identified only as Charles, as saying.
The report notes that ‘nowhere is the corruption worse than in the huge payoffs from drug traffickers’. A frequent target of accusations of drug dealing is Ahmed Wali Karzai, the powerful head of the Kandahar Provincial Council and one of the president’s brothers, the report adds.
The US Senate panel notes that stories about him are legendary – how Afghan police and military commanders who seize drugs in southern Afghanistan are told by Ahmed Wali to return them to the traffickers, how he arranged the imprisonment of a US drug informant who had tipped the Americans to a drug-laden truck near Kabul, how his accusers often turn up dead.
The report points out: ‘Questions have been raised in the past about whether the United States has the political will to go after influential members of the government.
DAWN.COM | World | Taliban can?t be defeated if drug money continues
Wednesday, 12 Aug, 2009 | 05:05 AM PST |
A frequent target of accusations of drug dealing is Ahmed Wali Karzai (above), the powerful head of the Kandahar Provincial Council and one of President Karzai’s brothers, says the report.
WASHINGTON: Senior US military and civilian officials believe the Taliban cannot be defeated and good government in Afghanistan cannot be established without cutting off the money generated by Afghanistan’s opium industry, says a US Senate report released on Tuesday.
The report notes that the illegal Afghan drug industry supplies more than 90 per cent of the world’s heroin and generates an estimated $3 billion a year in profits.
The report also includes, what it describes as ‘an overdue acknowledgement’, that ‘the drug situation has deteriorated sharply under the stewardship of the government of President Hamid Karzai, the United States and Nato-led International Security Assistance Force.’
The report titled ‘Afghanistan’s Narco War: Breaking the Link between drug traffickers and insurgents,’ was issued by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, examining the new US counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan.
The report points out that in 2004 and 2005 the US helped negotiate an agreement for aerial spraying in southern Afghanistan. President Karzai agreed tentatively to a pilot project.
But the Afghan cabinet rejected the idea outright, banning all forms of aerial spraying. ‘Some of them were protecting the source of their own wealth,’ the report quotes a State Department official, identified only as Charles, as saying.
The report notes that ‘nowhere is the corruption worse than in the huge payoffs from drug traffickers’. A frequent target of accusations of drug dealing is Ahmed Wali Karzai, the powerful head of the Kandahar Provincial Council and one of the president’s brothers, the report adds.
The US Senate panel notes that stories about him are legendary – how Afghan police and military commanders who seize drugs in southern Afghanistan are told by Ahmed Wali to return them to the traffickers, how he arranged the imprisonment of a US drug informant who had tipped the Americans to a drug-laden truck near Kabul, how his accusers often turn up dead.
The report points out: ‘Questions have been raised in the past about whether the United States has the political will to go after influential members of the government.
DAWN.COM | World | Taliban can?t be defeated if drug money continues
PAFAce
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This is an issue nobody really wants to discuss officially, but unofficially, everybody's got something to say about it. And according to the articles below, everyone's got some valid points.
Here are two articles I found on the Reuters website by Global Post journalists.
Noteworthy points:
- The Americans (or specifically, American contractors) are involved, directly and indirectly.
- The Afghan government is involved, directly and indirectly.
- Drugs are only a small fraction of the funding source.
- Afghan Taleban's finances are based on terrorism and intimidation (shocking!).
- Crime is a main source of funding for Pakistani Taleban.
- Rich Middle Easterns are involved.
- "Foreign state hands" can never be rules out.
Disclaimer: Needless to say, the opinions expressed below are not mine.
Who is funding the Afghan Taliban? You don’t want to know
12:40 August 13th, 2009
The article by Jean MacKenzie originally appeared in GlobalPost. This is part of a special series by GlobalPost called Life, Death and The Taliban.
KABUL — It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.
Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.
“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.
It is almost impossible to determine how much the insurgents are spending, making it difficult to pinpoint the sources of the funds.
Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, former Taliban minister to Pakistan, was perhaps more than a bit disingenuous when he told GlobalPost that the militants were operating mostly on air.
“The Taliban does not have many expenses,” he said, smiling slightly. “They are barefoot and hungry, with no roof over their heads and a stone for their pillow.” As for weapons, he just shrugged. “Afghanistan is full of guns,” he said. “We have enough guns for years.”
The reality is quite different, of course. The militants recruit local fighters by paying for their services. They move about in their traditional 4×4s, they have to feed their troops, pay for transportation and medical treatment for the wounded, and, of course, they have to buy rockets, grenades and their beloved Kalashnikovs.
Up until quite recently, most experts thought that drug money accounted for the bulk of Taliban funding. But even here opinion was divided on actual amounts. Some reports gauged the total annual income at about $100 million, while others placed the figure as high as $300 million — still a small fraction of the $4 billion poppy industry.
Now administration officials have launched a search for Taliban sponsors. Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a press conference in Islamabad last month that drugs accounted for less of a share of Taliban coffers than was previously thought.
“In the past there was a kind of feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan,” said Holbrooke, according to media reports. “That is simply not true.”
The new feeling is that less than half of the Taliban’s war chest comes from poppy, with a variety of sources, including private contributions from Persian Gulf states, accounting for much of the rest. Holbrooke told reporters that he would add a member of the Treasury Department to his staff to pursue the question of Taliban funding.
But perhaps U.S. officials need look no further than their own backyard.
Anecdotal evidence is mounting that the Taliban are taking a hefty portion of assistance money coming into Afghanistan from the outside.
This goes beyond mere protection money or extortion of “taxes” at the local level — very high-level negotiations take place between the Taliban and major contractors, according to sources close to the process.
A shadowy office in Kabul houses the Taliban contracts officer, who examines proposals and negotiates with organizational hierarchies for a percentage. He will not speak to, or even meet with, a journalist, but sources who have spoken with him and who have seen documents say that the process is quite professional.
The manager of an Afghan firm with lucrative construction contracts with the U.S. government builds in a minimum of 20 percent for the Taliban in his cost estimates. The manager, who will not speak openly, has told friends privately that he makes in the neighborhood of $1 million per month. Out of this, $200,000 is siphoned off for the insurgents.
If negotiations fall through, the project will come to harm — road workers may be attacked or killed, bridges may be blown up, engineers may be assassinated.
The degree of cooperation and coordination between the Taliban and aid workers is surprising, and would most likely make funders extremely uncomfortable.
One Afghan contractor, speaking privately, told friends of one project he was overseeing in the volatile south. The province cannot be mentioned, nor the particular project.
“I was building a bridge,” he said, one evening over drinks. “The local Taliban commander called and said ‘don’t build a bridge there, we’ll have to blow it up.’ I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money — then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project.”
In the south, no contract can be implemented without the Taliban taking a cut, sometimes at various steps along the way.
One contractor in the southern province of Helmand was negotiating with a local supplier for a large shipment of pipes. The pipes had to be brought in from Pakistan, so the supplier tacked on about 30 percent extra for the Taliban, to ensure that the pipes reached Lashkar Gah safely.
Once the pipes were given over to the contractor, he had to negotiate with the Taliban again to get the pipes out to the project site. This was added to the transportation costs.
“We assume that our people are paying off the Taliban,” said the foreign contractor in charge of the project.
In Farah province, local officials report that the Taliban are taking up to 40 percent of the money coming in for the National Solidarity Program, one of the country’s most successful community reconstruction projects, which has dispensed hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the country over the past six years.
Many Afghans see little wrong in the militants getting their fair share of foreign assistance.
“This is international money,” said one young Kabul resident. “They are not taking it from the people, they are taking it from their enemy.”
But in areas under Taliban control, the insurgents are extorting funds from the people as well.
In war-ravaged Helmand, where much of the province has been under Taliban control for the past two years, residents grumble about the tariffs.
“It’s a disaster,” said a 50-year-old resident of Marja district. “We have to give them two kilos of poppy paste per jerib during the harvest; then we have to give them ushr (an Islamic tax, amounting to one-tenth of the harvest) from our wheat. Then they insisted on zakat (an Islamic tithe). Now they have come up with something else: 12,000 Pakistani rupee (approximately $150) per household. And they won’t take even one rupee less.”
It all adds up, of course. But all things are relative: if the Taliban are able to raise and spend say $1 billion per year — the outside limit of what anyone has been able to predict — that accounts for what the United States is now spending on 10 days of the war to defeat them.
Funding the Pakistani Taliban
By Shahan Mufti - GlobalPost
Published: August 7, 2009 10:24 ET
MARDAN, Pakistan — Standing in the lush plains of Mardan in the Northwest Frontier Province, the rugged and arid mountains that enclose the Peshawar valley on all sides may appear farther than they actually are. A few dozen miles to the north and west in the mountains, the Pakistan army has been engaged in a bloody battle with Taliban militants for years over the control of territory.
The armed guerrilla fighters have avoided forays onto the flat plains of Mardan, but driving through the main market of the city where vendors sell everything from kebab to Kalashnikovs, or among the cattle in leafy tobacco fields, or the large 16-wheeler trucks on the potholed roads, there are traces of Taliban, even here.
You don't see Taliban foot soldiers — young men with the signature long hair, black turbans and beards — cruising the streets in the backs of pick-up trucks shaking down shop owners like gangsters. But in this bustling town and many others much farther away from the war zones, the Taliban's financial engine is chugging at full force right under the nose of law enforcement.
“The money is coming in from more sources than we know,” said Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a native of the nearby town of Charsada, who served as the interior minister under former President Pervez Musharraf. Sherpao was the man responsible for organizing civilian law enforcement when the Taliban first emerged on the scene in Pakistan.
Having survived two targeted assassination attempts and no longer serving in the government, he said “if they can dry up their revenues, (the militants) won’t last for long.” But tracking the money, he said "isn’t an easy job.”
And it's not just Sherpao who's worried. Cutting off the revenue streams of the Pakistani Taliban is something that U.S. President Barack Obama’s ****** special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, has linked to the successful completion of the American campaign in Afghanistan.
During his last visit to Pakistan in June, Holbrooke told reporters that in the past the traditional belief in Washington was that all the money came from the drug trade in Afghanistan. “That is simply not true,” he was quoted saying. In a press conference in Islamabad he announced that a member of the U.S. Treasury Department will be added to his staff to find out "where the money really comes from."
Traditionally, guerrilla groups thrive on one large favored revenue stream. For example, the FARC in Colombia has leaned heavily on the trade of coca for three decades and the diamond trade has fueled years of war in Africa. Just over Pakistan's border, the Afghani Taliban have a deep hand in the cultivation and trade of poppy.
While poppy has been largely eradicated from Pakistan, the political leadership and military planners in the country say that a chunk of the Afghan drug money still makes its way to Pakistani Taliban hands — to the tune of $200 million dollars a year, according to Pakistani military estimates.
An official at the Anti-Narcotics Force in Pakistan said that tracking terrorism funds is "far beyond our official mandate." But the force is working closely with the military to "stop drug money from getting into dangerous hands" and is stacked at all levels with retired and serving military generals.
But following this money across borders is especially difficult because much of it moves through the hawala system, which transfers money through unofficial money lending networks. In the hawal system, drug money is thrown in to the same pile as legal expat remittances, making it impossible to fully trace.
The tactics of the Pakistani Taliban suggest though that its needs go beyond a cut from the Afghan poppy industry, which the State Department estimated at $4 billion in 2007. The Pakistani Taliban shares a name with the Afghan group, but when it comes to the
money, Sherpao said the rule is: "live off the land."
Back in 2005, television camera crews in Swat, Pakistan, captured for the first time images of Taliban collecting donations from locals. Then, wooden carts with mounds of cash were parked on the street sides as women were seen dropping their jewelry into bags for masked young men
carrying AK47s.
The Pashtun militancy first grew in the tribal areas of Pakistan when the Pakistan military ventured to the Afghan border for the first time in history. At the time, the American military said that the Taliban had moved its bases into Pakistan and major high profile
ex-Afghan-mujahedeen leaders were traveling freely across the porous ****** border.
But by 2005 groups claiming to be part of the umbrella Taliban Movement of Pakistan (TTP) had started popping up in places like the Swat Valley, which has no border with Afghanistan. In Swat, the leadership of the major Taliban group came from the remnants of an old secessionist movement in the region that dates back to the 1970s, decades before the Taliban existed.
As the Pakistan army moved deeper into the steep green valley to battle these new groups, the Taliban couldn't just rely on the dwindling goodwill of a few poor ideological supporters. Like any good business, it diversified.
A report by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington published in June claims that millions of dollars are also ending up in Pakistani Taliban coffers from its control of the trade in counterfeit cigarettes. The report estimates that profits from the illicit cigarette trade may account for as much as 20 percent of total funding for these terrorist groups.
“After poppy, tobacco is probably the biggest revenue generator,” for the Taliban, said Ikram Sehgal, a former major-general in the Pakistan army who now runs one of the largest private security firms in the country.
Plus, officials constantly identify new Taliban revenue streams. The environmental protection agencies in Pakistan are blaming the “timber mafia” — illegal loggers — for funding the militancy. Last year the Taliban took over a dormant marble mine near the Afghan border, which then reportedly generated tens of thousands of dollars for it every month.
Aftab Sherpao, the former interior minister, said the Taliban also would have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past from emerald mining in the Swat Valley.
But nothing, it seems, pays better than good old crime. Rackets, extortion, kidnapping and banks heists are all helping the Pakistani Taliban pay the bills. Earlier this year the Taliban reportedly demanded nearly $1 million from Sikh minorities in their areas as jizya, or “tax.”
A thousand miles away, five men were arrested in June in the city of Karachi, the country's financial hub, for funding Taliban groups. The men were “involved in robbing banks and trailers on highways” and “different crimes” to provide funding to the Pakistani Taliban,
according the city’s police chief. The police also said the suspects were planning to kidnap businessmen in Karachi.
“Kidnapping is a major revenue source for them,” said Gen. Athar Abbas, the central spokesman for the Pakistan Army. “Sometimes we don’t even know how much has been paid to get people released so it’s hard to keep track,” he said. While the official stories mostly recount escapes, ransom is usually paid — “sometimes in the millions of dollars,” said Abbas.
But to Abbas and many others in Pakistan, stopping the drug trade in Afghanistan is still the key to controlling the militancy in Pakistan. “I don’t agree with (Holbrooke’s) assessment,” he said. “The opium trade is still the backbone of the funding” for militants in Pakistan.
Former minister Sherpao said that since the pay-offs in the drug trade in Afghanistan go up to the “highest levels,” “it’s not easy to control it from this side.”
Sherpao's suggestion is echoed frequently by Pakistani officials who say that Afghan officials, including the Afghan president, are involved in the drug trade and thereby complicit in financing the Taliban militancy inside Pakistan.
It's a not a purely academic debate. By hitting such a disparaging note in the funding debate, Pakistan is then able to build political pressure on Afghanistan and the United States to do more on the other side of the border.
The Pakistan government now also routinely points the finger at India for backing the Pashtun and Balochi insurgents in Pakistan through consulates in Afghanistan.
This month, basking in the glory of a fairly successful anti-Taliban offensive in the Swat Valley region, the Pakistani government used U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit as an opportunity to announce that it had presented the Indian Prime Minister with evidence
of his country's involvement in financing and aiding terrorism in Pakistan.
Looking in another direction, Holbrooke has said that the U.S. would look closely at wealthy individuals on the Arabian peninsula who might be funding the Taliban in Pakistan. That might be difficult, however. A 2003 study by the World Bank suggests that drug money transacted between the Middle East and Afghanistan goes through the opaque hawala system.
Before this, for a few years the U.S. had maintained that the Pakistan army and intelligence outfits were themselves funding the insurgency they were fighting. And now the debate has come full circle — a common refrain in Pakistan echoed by many from retired diplomats to retired militants is that the “Taliban are agents of America."
How is the Pakistani Taliban financing its war? There is no easy or singular answer. And in the ensuing confusion everyone is blamed while no one admits to anything. In the end, it might be this blame game that the Taliban profits from most.
Here are two articles I found on the Reuters website by Global Post journalists.
Noteworthy points:
- The Americans (or specifically, American contractors) are involved, directly and indirectly.
- The Afghan government is involved, directly and indirectly.
- Drugs are only a small fraction of the funding source.
- Afghan Taleban's finances are based on terrorism and intimidation (shocking!).
- Crime is a main source of funding for Pakistani Taleban.
- Rich Middle Easterns are involved.
- "Foreign state hands" can never be rules out.
Disclaimer: Needless to say, the opinions expressed below are not mine.
Who is funding the Afghan Taliban? You don’t want to know
12:40 August 13th, 2009
The article by Jean MacKenzie originally appeared in GlobalPost. This is part of a special series by GlobalPost called Life, Death and The Taliban.
KABUL — It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.
Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.
“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.
It is almost impossible to determine how much the insurgents are spending, making it difficult to pinpoint the sources of the funds.
Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, former Taliban minister to Pakistan, was perhaps more than a bit disingenuous when he told GlobalPost that the militants were operating mostly on air.
“The Taliban does not have many expenses,” he said, smiling slightly. “They are barefoot and hungry, with no roof over their heads and a stone for their pillow.” As for weapons, he just shrugged. “Afghanistan is full of guns,” he said. “We have enough guns for years.”
The reality is quite different, of course. The militants recruit local fighters by paying for their services. They move about in their traditional 4×4s, they have to feed their troops, pay for transportation and medical treatment for the wounded, and, of course, they have to buy rockets, grenades and their beloved Kalashnikovs.
Up until quite recently, most experts thought that drug money accounted for the bulk of Taliban funding. But even here opinion was divided on actual amounts. Some reports gauged the total annual income at about $100 million, while others placed the figure as high as $300 million — still a small fraction of the $4 billion poppy industry.
Now administration officials have launched a search for Taliban sponsors. Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a press conference in Islamabad last month that drugs accounted for less of a share of Taliban coffers than was previously thought.
“In the past there was a kind of feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan,” said Holbrooke, according to media reports. “That is simply not true.”
The new feeling is that less than half of the Taliban’s war chest comes from poppy, with a variety of sources, including private contributions from Persian Gulf states, accounting for much of the rest. Holbrooke told reporters that he would add a member of the Treasury Department to his staff to pursue the question of Taliban funding.
But perhaps U.S. officials need look no further than their own backyard.
Anecdotal evidence is mounting that the Taliban are taking a hefty portion of assistance money coming into Afghanistan from the outside.
This goes beyond mere protection money or extortion of “taxes” at the local level — very high-level negotiations take place between the Taliban and major contractors, according to sources close to the process.
A shadowy office in Kabul houses the Taliban contracts officer, who examines proposals and negotiates with organizational hierarchies for a percentage. He will not speak to, or even meet with, a journalist, but sources who have spoken with him and who have seen documents say that the process is quite professional.
The manager of an Afghan firm with lucrative construction contracts with the U.S. government builds in a minimum of 20 percent for the Taliban in his cost estimates. The manager, who will not speak openly, has told friends privately that he makes in the neighborhood of $1 million per month. Out of this, $200,000 is siphoned off for the insurgents.
If negotiations fall through, the project will come to harm — road workers may be attacked or killed, bridges may be blown up, engineers may be assassinated.
The degree of cooperation and coordination between the Taliban and aid workers is surprising, and would most likely make funders extremely uncomfortable.
One Afghan contractor, speaking privately, told friends of one project he was overseeing in the volatile south. The province cannot be mentioned, nor the particular project.
“I was building a bridge,” he said, one evening over drinks. “The local Taliban commander called and said ‘don’t build a bridge there, we’ll have to blow it up.’ I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money — then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project.”
In the south, no contract can be implemented without the Taliban taking a cut, sometimes at various steps along the way.
One contractor in the southern province of Helmand was negotiating with a local supplier for a large shipment of pipes. The pipes had to be brought in from Pakistan, so the supplier tacked on about 30 percent extra for the Taliban, to ensure that the pipes reached Lashkar Gah safely.
Once the pipes were given over to the contractor, he had to negotiate with the Taliban again to get the pipes out to the project site. This was added to the transportation costs.
“We assume that our people are paying off the Taliban,” said the foreign contractor in charge of the project.
In Farah province, local officials report that the Taliban are taking up to 40 percent of the money coming in for the National Solidarity Program, one of the country’s most successful community reconstruction projects, which has dispensed hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the country over the past six years.
Many Afghans see little wrong in the militants getting their fair share of foreign assistance.
“This is international money,” said one young Kabul resident. “They are not taking it from the people, they are taking it from their enemy.”
But in areas under Taliban control, the insurgents are extorting funds from the people as well.
In war-ravaged Helmand, where much of the province has been under Taliban control for the past two years, residents grumble about the tariffs.
“It’s a disaster,” said a 50-year-old resident of Marja district. “We have to give them two kilos of poppy paste per jerib during the harvest; then we have to give them ushr (an Islamic tax, amounting to one-tenth of the harvest) from our wheat. Then they insisted on zakat (an Islamic tithe). Now they have come up with something else: 12,000 Pakistani rupee (approximately $150) per household. And they won’t take even one rupee less.”
It all adds up, of course. But all things are relative: if the Taliban are able to raise and spend say $1 billion per year — the outside limit of what anyone has been able to predict — that accounts for what the United States is now spending on 10 days of the war to defeat them.
Funding the Pakistani Taliban
By Shahan Mufti - GlobalPost
Published: August 7, 2009 10:24 ET
MARDAN, Pakistan — Standing in the lush plains of Mardan in the Northwest Frontier Province, the rugged and arid mountains that enclose the Peshawar valley on all sides may appear farther than they actually are. A few dozen miles to the north and west in the mountains, the Pakistan army has been engaged in a bloody battle with Taliban militants for years over the control of territory.
The armed guerrilla fighters have avoided forays onto the flat plains of Mardan, but driving through the main market of the city where vendors sell everything from kebab to Kalashnikovs, or among the cattle in leafy tobacco fields, or the large 16-wheeler trucks on the potholed roads, there are traces of Taliban, even here.
You don't see Taliban foot soldiers — young men with the signature long hair, black turbans and beards — cruising the streets in the backs of pick-up trucks shaking down shop owners like gangsters. But in this bustling town and many others much farther away from the war zones, the Taliban's financial engine is chugging at full force right under the nose of law enforcement.
“The money is coming in from more sources than we know,” said Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a native of the nearby town of Charsada, who served as the interior minister under former President Pervez Musharraf. Sherpao was the man responsible for organizing civilian law enforcement when the Taliban first emerged on the scene in Pakistan.
Having survived two targeted assassination attempts and no longer serving in the government, he said “if they can dry up their revenues, (the militants) won’t last for long.” But tracking the money, he said "isn’t an easy job.”
And it's not just Sherpao who's worried. Cutting off the revenue streams of the Pakistani Taliban is something that U.S. President Barack Obama’s ****** special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, has linked to the successful completion of the American campaign in Afghanistan.
During his last visit to Pakistan in June, Holbrooke told reporters that in the past the traditional belief in Washington was that all the money came from the drug trade in Afghanistan. “That is simply not true,” he was quoted saying. In a press conference in Islamabad he announced that a member of the U.S. Treasury Department will be added to his staff to find out "where the money really comes from."
Traditionally, guerrilla groups thrive on one large favored revenue stream. For example, the FARC in Colombia has leaned heavily on the trade of coca for three decades and the diamond trade has fueled years of war in Africa. Just over Pakistan's border, the Afghani Taliban have a deep hand in the cultivation and trade of poppy.
While poppy has been largely eradicated from Pakistan, the political leadership and military planners in the country say that a chunk of the Afghan drug money still makes its way to Pakistani Taliban hands — to the tune of $200 million dollars a year, according to Pakistani military estimates.
An official at the Anti-Narcotics Force in Pakistan said that tracking terrorism funds is "far beyond our official mandate." But the force is working closely with the military to "stop drug money from getting into dangerous hands" and is stacked at all levels with retired and serving military generals.
But following this money across borders is especially difficult because much of it moves through the hawala system, which transfers money through unofficial money lending networks. In the hawal system, drug money is thrown in to the same pile as legal expat remittances, making it impossible to fully trace.
The tactics of the Pakistani Taliban suggest though that its needs go beyond a cut from the Afghan poppy industry, which the State Department estimated at $4 billion in 2007. The Pakistani Taliban shares a name with the Afghan group, but when it comes to the
money, Sherpao said the rule is: "live off the land."
Back in 2005, television camera crews in Swat, Pakistan, captured for the first time images of Taliban collecting donations from locals. Then, wooden carts with mounds of cash were parked on the street sides as women were seen dropping their jewelry into bags for masked young men
carrying AK47s.
The Pashtun militancy first grew in the tribal areas of Pakistan when the Pakistan military ventured to the Afghan border for the first time in history. At the time, the American military said that the Taliban had moved its bases into Pakistan and major high profile
ex-Afghan-mujahedeen leaders were traveling freely across the porous ****** border.
But by 2005 groups claiming to be part of the umbrella Taliban Movement of Pakistan (TTP) had started popping up in places like the Swat Valley, which has no border with Afghanistan. In Swat, the leadership of the major Taliban group came from the remnants of an old secessionist movement in the region that dates back to the 1970s, decades before the Taliban existed.
As the Pakistan army moved deeper into the steep green valley to battle these new groups, the Taliban couldn't just rely on the dwindling goodwill of a few poor ideological supporters. Like any good business, it diversified.
A report by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington published in June claims that millions of dollars are also ending up in Pakistani Taliban coffers from its control of the trade in counterfeit cigarettes. The report estimates that profits from the illicit cigarette trade may account for as much as 20 percent of total funding for these terrorist groups.
“After poppy, tobacco is probably the biggest revenue generator,” for the Taliban, said Ikram Sehgal, a former major-general in the Pakistan army who now runs one of the largest private security firms in the country.
Plus, officials constantly identify new Taliban revenue streams. The environmental protection agencies in Pakistan are blaming the “timber mafia” — illegal loggers — for funding the militancy. Last year the Taliban took over a dormant marble mine near the Afghan border, which then reportedly generated tens of thousands of dollars for it every month.
Aftab Sherpao, the former interior minister, said the Taliban also would have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past from emerald mining in the Swat Valley.
But nothing, it seems, pays better than good old crime. Rackets, extortion, kidnapping and banks heists are all helping the Pakistani Taliban pay the bills. Earlier this year the Taliban reportedly demanded nearly $1 million from Sikh minorities in their areas as jizya, or “tax.”
A thousand miles away, five men were arrested in June in the city of Karachi, the country's financial hub, for funding Taliban groups. The men were “involved in robbing banks and trailers on highways” and “different crimes” to provide funding to the Pakistani Taliban,
according the city’s police chief. The police also said the suspects were planning to kidnap businessmen in Karachi.
“Kidnapping is a major revenue source for them,” said Gen. Athar Abbas, the central spokesman for the Pakistan Army. “Sometimes we don’t even know how much has been paid to get people released so it’s hard to keep track,” he said. While the official stories mostly recount escapes, ransom is usually paid — “sometimes in the millions of dollars,” said Abbas.
But to Abbas and many others in Pakistan, stopping the drug trade in Afghanistan is still the key to controlling the militancy in Pakistan. “I don’t agree with (Holbrooke’s) assessment,” he said. “The opium trade is still the backbone of the funding” for militants in Pakistan.
Former minister Sherpao said that since the pay-offs in the drug trade in Afghanistan go up to the “highest levels,” “it’s not easy to control it from this side.”
Sherpao's suggestion is echoed frequently by Pakistani officials who say that Afghan officials, including the Afghan president, are involved in the drug trade and thereby complicit in financing the Taliban militancy inside Pakistan.
It's a not a purely academic debate. By hitting such a disparaging note in the funding debate, Pakistan is then able to build political pressure on Afghanistan and the United States to do more on the other side of the border.
The Pakistan government now also routinely points the finger at India for backing the Pashtun and Balochi insurgents in Pakistan through consulates in Afghanistan.
This month, basking in the glory of a fairly successful anti-Taliban offensive in the Swat Valley region, the Pakistani government used U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit as an opportunity to announce that it had presented the Indian Prime Minister with evidence
of his country's involvement in financing and aiding terrorism in Pakistan.
Looking in another direction, Holbrooke has said that the U.S. would look closely at wealthy individuals on the Arabian peninsula who might be funding the Taliban in Pakistan. That might be difficult, however. A 2003 study by the World Bank suggests that drug money transacted between the Middle East and Afghanistan goes through the opaque hawala system.
Before this, for a few years the U.S. had maintained that the Pakistan army and intelligence outfits were themselves funding the insurgency they were fighting. And now the debate has come full circle — a common refrain in Pakistan echoed by many from retired diplomats to retired militants is that the “Taliban are agents of America."
How is the Pakistani Taliban financing its war? There is no easy or singular answer. And in the ensuing confusion everyone is blamed while no one admits to anything. In the end, it might be this blame game that the Taliban profits from most.
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one thing more, they tax the truckers on the border.
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Dawn News
PESHAWAR: As various militant groups fight it out to inherit about two billion rupees in cash and weaponry left behind by Baitullah Mehsud, government and security officials say it will take the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan a considerable time to rebuild and recover from a shocking blow to its leadership.
‘The cracks within the TTP are all too visible. In classical counter-insurgency terms, the fissures within the TTP conglomerate suggest that their decline has started. We are over the hump,’ a senior security official with considerable experience in counter-terrorism told Dawn.
‘There is a struggle for the leadership and this would include the struggle for power, territory, stature and resources,’ a senior military official said.
And signs of fissures within the TTP are all too evident, these officials said. The TTP has not been able to choose a new leader. Indeed, different accounts speak of a shootout at a shura meeting in Makeen soon after Baitullah’s death to choose his successor, between Waliur Rehman and Hakeemullah, two top aides of the slain militant commander.
Subsequently, two militant groups clashed in the Orakzai tribal region followed by an ambush of a group of militants associated with Wana-based Maulvi Nazir in the Mehsud-dominated region in South Waziristan.
‘The TTP will not be the TTP it was. Their time is up. We feel that the threat to national security is receding,’ a cautious military official said.
Formed in Dec 2007, the TTP has been able to accumulate resources and strength at such a lightning speed that it baffled and stunned the national security apparatus that eventually declared its leader a national enemy after trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to rope him in through flawed peace deals.
Investigators now believe that kidnappings for ransom formed the lion’s share of the TTP’s revenue generation. Last year alone, the TTP kidnapped 70 people from the length and breadth of Pakistan, including places as far as Karachi and Lahore.
And it still has 50 people waiting to win freedom in return for money. A money-changer from Karachi, close to a political heavyweight of the country, is reported to have paid Rs50 million to win freedom.
Haji Dad Gul Alokozoy, an alleged Afghan drug dealer, who was kidnapped from Peshawar’s Hayatabad, paid Rs60 million to secure release. A billionaire, the dealer’s son too got kidnapped from near Kabul and subsequently was released on payment of an unspecified sum. The dealer was arrested by security agencies and handed over to the American Drug Enforcement Administration.
‘This is where the TTP got most of its money from,’ the official said. ‘I think almost 70 per cent of it came from kidnappings for ransom,’ the counter-terrorism official said.
At least 20 per cent of the money to the TTP, say the investigators, came from donors in the Gulf and the Middle East, mostly through Al Qaeda affiliates. The main source of Al Qaeda funding to the TTP is Sheikh Mustafa Ahmad Mohammad Uthman Abu Al-Yazid, also known as Sheikh Saeed Al-Masri, the investigators claim.
Considered to be Al Qaeda leader for Pakistan and Afghanistan region, 54-year-old Al-Masri, according to a militant website, is also head of the organisation’s finance committee.
In February last, Pakistani security agencies picked up James Alexander Mclintock, a converted Muslim of Scottish origin, who, investigators said, ran a UK-based charity -- the Human Relief Foundation.
The charity reportedly raised 15 million pounds, much of which, officials said, went to finance the TTP. But there was no independent confirmation of the claim by security officials.
The 44-year-old Mclintock from Dundee, Scotland, who had taken the name of Mohammad Yaqub Al-Rashidi after converting to Islam when he was in his 20s, was deported in May last without any charge.
Mclintock had been arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 on suspicion of terrorism, but was released without charge a few weeks later. He was again arrested in Pakistan in Feb 2004 and deported.
A Saudi charity, Al-Harmain Foundation, allegedly funnelled 55 million dirham; again much of it going into the TTP coffers, officials said. There was no dearth of private individuals who made millions of rupees in donations to the TTP.
Ironically, the political administration in South Waziristan also doled out development projects to Baitullah-nominated private contractors to keep him in good humour, the officials acknowledged.
‘There was a lot of money flowing in from all sorts of directions and much of it went into TTP’s central Baitul Maal, where, while bulk of the money remains in liquid form, a portion of it goes into weapons procurement and replenishment,’ one official said.
‘But we know of no caves where the TTP stashes its money. All that we know is that there is a central Baitul Maal and then there are local and regional Baitul Maals,’ he said.
‘All of this is at stake. Whosoever gets the leadership gets all this, besides power and influence,’ one military official said.
‘There is a lot of jockeying going on,’ a security official said. Baitullah’s TTP was the biggest with the largest force of 8,000 fighting cadre. But Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a militant commander, who was allied to but was not a member of the TTP, could now lay claim to the leadership with almost similar number of hardcore fighters, a government official said.
But militant commanders from Mehsud tribe would like to keep the TTP leadership within their own tribe and coupled with the turf war within, the situation was a bit complicated for them right now.
A security official, who sat at the preliminary interrogation of the captured TTP spokesman, Maulvi Omar, quoted him as admitting to problems over succession.
‘There is a leadership vacuum within the TTP right now. But let’s not get excited. The TTP still has all the elements at its disposal; the money and then men to fight. All they need is a leader,’ the senior military officer said.
‘The elimination of Baitullah is one big step, but it is still one step towards the elimination of the entire infrastructure. It will take a few years to reach that goal,’ the official warned.
PESHAWAR: As various militant groups fight it out to inherit about two billion rupees in cash and weaponry left behind by Baitullah Mehsud, government and security officials say it will take the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan a considerable time to rebuild and recover from a shocking blow to its leadership.
‘The cracks within the TTP are all too visible. In classical counter-insurgency terms, the fissures within the TTP conglomerate suggest that their decline has started. We are over the hump,’ a senior security official with considerable experience in counter-terrorism told Dawn.
‘There is a struggle for the leadership and this would include the struggle for power, territory, stature and resources,’ a senior military official said.
And signs of fissures within the TTP are all too evident, these officials said. The TTP has not been able to choose a new leader. Indeed, different accounts speak of a shootout at a shura meeting in Makeen soon after Baitullah’s death to choose his successor, between Waliur Rehman and Hakeemullah, two top aides of the slain militant commander.
Subsequently, two militant groups clashed in the Orakzai tribal region followed by an ambush of a group of militants associated with Wana-based Maulvi Nazir in the Mehsud-dominated region in South Waziristan.
‘The TTP will not be the TTP it was. Their time is up. We feel that the threat to national security is receding,’ a cautious military official said.
Formed in Dec 2007, the TTP has been able to accumulate resources and strength at such a lightning speed that it baffled and stunned the national security apparatus that eventually declared its leader a national enemy after trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to rope him in through flawed peace deals.
Investigators now believe that kidnappings for ransom formed the lion’s share of the TTP’s revenue generation. Last year alone, the TTP kidnapped 70 people from the length and breadth of Pakistan, including places as far as Karachi and Lahore.
And it still has 50 people waiting to win freedom in return for money. A money-changer from Karachi, close to a political heavyweight of the country, is reported to have paid Rs50 million to win freedom.
Haji Dad Gul Alokozoy, an alleged Afghan drug dealer, who was kidnapped from Peshawar’s Hayatabad, paid Rs60 million to secure release. A billionaire, the dealer’s son too got kidnapped from near Kabul and subsequently was released on payment of an unspecified sum. The dealer was arrested by security agencies and handed over to the American Drug Enforcement Administration.
‘This is where the TTP got most of its money from,’ the official said. ‘I think almost 70 per cent of it came from kidnappings for ransom,’ the counter-terrorism official said.
At least 20 per cent of the money to the TTP, say the investigators, came from donors in the Gulf and the Middle East, mostly through Al Qaeda affiliates. The main source of Al Qaeda funding to the TTP is Sheikh Mustafa Ahmad Mohammad Uthman Abu Al-Yazid, also known as Sheikh Saeed Al-Masri, the investigators claim.
Considered to be Al Qaeda leader for Pakistan and Afghanistan region, 54-year-old Al-Masri, according to a militant website, is also head of the organisation’s finance committee.
In February last, Pakistani security agencies picked up James Alexander Mclintock, a converted Muslim of Scottish origin, who, investigators said, ran a UK-based charity -- the Human Relief Foundation.
The charity reportedly raised 15 million pounds, much of which, officials said, went to finance the TTP. But there was no independent confirmation of the claim by security officials.
The 44-year-old Mclintock from Dundee, Scotland, who had taken the name of Mohammad Yaqub Al-Rashidi after converting to Islam when he was in his 20s, was deported in May last without any charge.
Mclintock had been arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 on suspicion of terrorism, but was released without charge a few weeks later. He was again arrested in Pakistan in Feb 2004 and deported.
A Saudi charity, Al-Harmain Foundation, allegedly funnelled 55 million dirham; again much of it going into the TTP coffers, officials said. There was no dearth of private individuals who made millions of rupees in donations to the TTP.
Ironically, the political administration in South Waziristan also doled out development projects to Baitullah-nominated private contractors to keep him in good humour, the officials acknowledged.
‘There was a lot of money flowing in from all sorts of directions and much of it went into TTP’s central Baitul Maal, where, while bulk of the money remains in liquid form, a portion of it goes into weapons procurement and replenishment,’ one official said.
‘But we know of no caves where the TTP stashes its money. All that we know is that there is a central Baitul Maal and then there are local and regional Baitul Maals,’ he said.
‘All of this is at stake. Whosoever gets the leadership gets all this, besides power and influence,’ one military official said.
‘There is a lot of jockeying going on,’ a security official said. Baitullah’s TTP was the biggest with the largest force of 8,000 fighting cadre. But Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a militant commander, who was allied to but was not a member of the TTP, could now lay claim to the leadership with almost similar number of hardcore fighters, a government official said.
But militant commanders from Mehsud tribe would like to keep the TTP leadership within their own tribe and coupled with the turf war within, the situation was a bit complicated for them right now.
A security official, who sat at the preliminary interrogation of the captured TTP spokesman, Maulvi Omar, quoted him as admitting to problems over succession.
‘There is a leadership vacuum within the TTP right now. But let’s not get excited. The TTP still has all the elements at its disposal; the money and then men to fight. All they need is a leader,’ the senior military officer said.
‘The elimination of Baitullah is one big step, but it is still one step towards the elimination of the entire infrastructure. It will take a few years to reach that goal,’ the official warned.
pak-marine
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taliban are paid in pakistan but the money is their savings from money paid by the saudis and americans
Pakistan Says West Must Cut Source of Talibans Funding, Arms
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan defended its fight against Islamic extremism and called on Western governments to choke off funding and arms supplies to Taliban insurgents.
Sardar Tariq Azizuddin, the countrys ambassador to Turkey, said people should question how the Taliban grew strong enough to take on NATO and U.S. forces.
What is the source of Taliban funding and what is the source of their weapons supply? Azizuddin said in an interview with Turkish media, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported yesterday. Nobody either talks about it or wants to talk about it.
The Obama administration says Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in Pakistans northwestern tribal regions threaten the stability of the nuclear-armed nation and hamper the war effort by the U.S. and NATO in neighboring Afghanistan.
Turkey was hosting a meeting of the so-called Friends of Democratic Pakistan, which includes the U.S., China, Saudi Arabia and the World Bank. The group promotes international support for Pakistan as it aims to overcome security and development challenges.
The government in Islamabad says it is winning its fight against extremists and that the Taliban is in disarray after rebel chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a missile strike earlier this month.
Mehsud led a force of 5,000 fighters in the South Waziristan tribal region, after forming the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan alliance in 2007, according to U.S. military analysts.
Swat Valley
The government also hails its 10-week offensive against insurgents in the northwestern Swat Valley as a sign of success, saying militants have been cleared from towns and villages.
The armed forces secured the main areas and are mopping up some elements on the fringes, APP cited Azizuddin as saying.
The anti-Taliban offensive by NATO and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan has pushed militants across the border and aggravated the situation in our country, the ambassador said, according to the report.
After a U.S.-led alliance toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, guerrillas fled to bases in Pakistan where they re-armed and trained, according to U.S. intelligence agencies. The insurgency has grown, with militants crossing back and forth across the frontier.
The illicit opium trade, worth as much as $470 million last year, is a major financial pillar for the Taliban, funding training bases and buying weapons and explosives, according to the United Nations.
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN yesterday that Afghanistans security is getting worse as the Taliban insurgency grows more sophisticated.
Pakistan Says West Must Cut Source of Taliban?s Funding, Arms - Bloomberg.com
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan defended its fight against Islamic extremism and called on Western governments to choke off funding and arms supplies to Taliban insurgents.
Sardar Tariq Azizuddin, the countrys ambassador to Turkey, said people should question how the Taliban grew strong enough to take on NATO and U.S. forces.
What is the source of Taliban funding and what is the source of their weapons supply? Azizuddin said in an interview with Turkish media, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported yesterday. Nobody either talks about it or wants to talk about it.
The Obama administration says Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in Pakistans northwestern tribal regions threaten the stability of the nuclear-armed nation and hamper the war effort by the U.S. and NATO in neighboring Afghanistan.
Turkey was hosting a meeting of the so-called Friends of Democratic Pakistan, which includes the U.S., China, Saudi Arabia and the World Bank. The group promotes international support for Pakistan as it aims to overcome security and development challenges.
The government in Islamabad says it is winning its fight against extremists and that the Taliban is in disarray after rebel chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a missile strike earlier this month.
Mehsud led a force of 5,000 fighters in the South Waziristan tribal region, after forming the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan alliance in 2007, according to U.S. military analysts.
Swat Valley
The government also hails its 10-week offensive against insurgents in the northwestern Swat Valley as a sign of success, saying militants have been cleared from towns and villages.
The armed forces secured the main areas and are mopping up some elements on the fringes, APP cited Azizuddin as saying.
The anti-Taliban offensive by NATO and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan has pushed militants across the border and aggravated the situation in our country, the ambassador said, according to the report.
After a U.S.-led alliance toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, guerrillas fled to bases in Pakistan where they re-armed and trained, according to U.S. intelligence agencies. The insurgency has grown, with militants crossing back and forth across the frontier.
The illicit opium trade, worth as much as $470 million last year, is a major financial pillar for the Taliban, funding training bases and buying weapons and explosives, according to the United Nations.
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN yesterday that Afghanistans security is getting worse as the Taliban insurgency grows more sophisticated.
Pakistan Says West Must Cut Source of Taliban?s Funding, Arms - Bloomberg.com
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Gulf oil fuelling Taliban wars: Holbrooke
LAHORE: Richard Holbrooke, the top US diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told CNN on Tuesday the deadly Taliban insurgency in both countries relies heavily on funding from the Persian Gulf. Such donations, he told CNN, outpaced even the multibillion-dollar exports of opium and heroin from Afghanistan. It seems to be ... individuals carrying money in their suitcases, he said. Sometimes they are taking advantage of the pilgrimage. Sometimes from hawala. Sometimes from charities. One of the top priorities of the Obama administration in the region had been to help Afghanistan hold [the August 20] presidential elections, he added.
daily times monitor
LAHORE: Richard Holbrooke, the top US diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told CNN on Tuesday the deadly Taliban insurgency in both countries relies heavily on funding from the Persian Gulf. Such donations, he told CNN, outpaced even the multibillion-dollar exports of opium and heroin from Afghanistan. It seems to be ... individuals carrying money in their suitcases, he said. Sometimes they are taking advantage of the pilgrimage. Sometimes from hawala. Sometimes from charities. One of the top priorities of the Obama administration in the region had been to help Afghanistan hold [the August 20] presidential elections, he added.
daily times monitor
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CNN
ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) -- America's top diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan says the deadly Taliban insurgency in those countries relies heavily on funding from the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
Such money even outpaces the cash gathered from Afghanistan's multibillion-dollar exports of opium and heroin, said Richard Holbrooke, the United States' special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, in an interview Tuesday with CNN.
"It seems to be more from individuals carrying money in their suitcases," Holbrooke said. "Sometimes they are taking advantage of the pilgrimage [to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia]. Sometimes from hawala [an informal international system for money transfers]. Sometimes from charities.
"It is an important part of the war. ... The Taliban is not a high-tech expensive organization."
U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan have suffered high losses this summer at the hands of Taliban insurgents.
Holbrooke gave the interview to CNN on the sidelines of a Friends of Democratic Pakistan meeting in Istanbul. The meeting was attended by delegations from more than a dozen countries and international organizations, including the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Turkey, Sweden, Canada, the United Arab Emirates and Iran.
ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) -- America's top diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan says the deadly Taliban insurgency in those countries relies heavily on funding from the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
Such money even outpaces the cash gathered from Afghanistan's multibillion-dollar exports of opium and heroin, said Richard Holbrooke, the United States' special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, in an interview Tuesday with CNN.
"It seems to be more from individuals carrying money in their suitcases," Holbrooke said. "Sometimes they are taking advantage of the pilgrimage [to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia]. Sometimes from hawala [an informal international system for money transfers]. Sometimes from charities.
"It is an important part of the war. ... The Taliban is not a high-tech expensive organization."
U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan have suffered high losses this summer at the hands of Taliban insurgents.
Holbrooke gave the interview to CNN on the sidelines of a Friends of Democratic Pakistan meeting in Istanbul. The meeting was attended by delegations from more than a dozen countries and international organizations, including the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Turkey, Sweden, Canada, the United Arab Emirates and Iran.
Y2A
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Agreed, government should seriously look into this subject, as most of the funding are the “remittances” from our good old “friends” government of Pakistan need to launch an offensive diplomatic mission through out the world on the matter and let the people know about the “role” being played by our neighbors and friends-cum-masters, who are crying of being the victims of terrorism and on the other hand sponsoring rouge elements like TTP.
Having said that, a question pops up in my mind, could it fix the horrifying predicament we are facing? My hunch is no, it won’t, it could only be proved to be a short time solution, Actual problem is inside our social system as our surroundings and climate is always been an appropriate attraction for any sow of hate to later become the tree of thorns.
TTP is just an extension of what is happening around us for last few decades, it is a combine mixture of consequences of many social norms of our society feudalism, low literacy rate in rural areas which are epicenter of TTP’s recruiting, militancy caused by the sectarian hate and socio-economical injustice, spirit of vengeance among those who lose their innocent love ones in military strikes, both from forces of NATO and “NON-NATO”,
TTP is really enjoying the show, we are creating opportunities for them, its very easy to encourage any deprive, left behind person who is deeply suffering for the revenge, we have to look into the root of the dispute, blocking funding can only slow down the terrorist activities, rouge element will ultimately look for the alternate source of funds, Sources of “inspirational events” will never decrease as long as NATO is present in Afghanistan, the “MAGNICIFENT” success rate of drone attacks and GoP’s stand over the issue is substantial enough for few more SAWATS and WAZIRISTANS all around Pakistan, most people will hate me for this but this is a fact TTP is looking forward for more chapters all across the country specially backward rural areas, I will pray some buddy come and prove all my reservations and concerns wrong later.
Money and fundings can only flourish such mentalities which are already present in our society as accepted entities with cracked up agenda of RED REVOLUTION, what we have to do is to look for the systematic strategy to counter these elements on social, military, political and intellectual level.
Having said that, a question pops up in my mind, could it fix the horrifying predicament we are facing? My hunch is no, it won’t, it could only be proved to be a short time solution, Actual problem is inside our social system as our surroundings and climate is always been an appropriate attraction for any sow of hate to later become the tree of thorns.
TTP is just an extension of what is happening around us for last few decades, it is a combine mixture of consequences of many social norms of our society feudalism, low literacy rate in rural areas which are epicenter of TTP’s recruiting, militancy caused by the sectarian hate and socio-economical injustice, spirit of vengeance among those who lose their innocent love ones in military strikes, both from forces of NATO and “NON-NATO”,
TTP is really enjoying the show, we are creating opportunities for them, its very easy to encourage any deprive, left behind person who is deeply suffering for the revenge, we have to look into the root of the dispute, blocking funding can only slow down the terrorist activities, rouge element will ultimately look for the alternate source of funds, Sources of “inspirational events” will never decrease as long as NATO is present in Afghanistan, the “MAGNICIFENT” success rate of drone attacks and GoP’s stand over the issue is substantial enough for few more SAWATS and WAZIRISTANS all around Pakistan, most people will hate me for this but this is a fact TTP is looking forward for more chapters all across the country specially backward rural areas, I will pray some buddy come and prove all my reservations and concerns wrong later.
Money and fundings can only flourish such mentalities which are already present in our society as accepted entities with cracked up agenda of RED REVOLUTION, what we have to do is to look for the systematic strategy to counter these elements on social, military, political and intellectual level.
waraich66
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Peace can only be restore when US stop Israel terrorism in middle east and there is also need to make peace between shia and sunni waring factions involved in war in Afghanistan and FATA.
There is need to develop understanding between muslims to resolve their fiqa differences.
US and UK can help to stop bloodshed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Sunni groups are supporting Talaban and Hamas and Shia groups are supprting northern alliance ,hizbullah.
Israel is getting benefit of this war between sunni and shia groups.
There is need to develop understanding between muslims to resolve their fiqa differences.
US and UK can help to stop bloodshed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Sunni groups are supporting Talaban and Hamas and Shia groups are supprting northern alliance ,hizbullah.
Israel is getting benefit of this war between sunni and shia groups.
BATMAN
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Popy corp is the source of TTP funding.
The nexus involved in heroin trade is so strong that they forced US president to go on war and we all know about the engineered excuse.
Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban
indian wepons and indian soldiers are transited through Pakistan air space. thanks to corruption.
Hold on ...i can list some hidden benificiaries of TTP campaign:
IMF, WORLD BANK, SHAUKAT TAREEN..........
Of course the loosers are poor AWAM of Pakistan and school going girls of SAWAT
The nexus involved in heroin trade is so strong that they forced US president to go on war and we all know about the engineered excuse.
Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban
indian wepons and indian soldiers are transited through Pakistan air space. thanks to corruption.
Hold on ...i can list some hidden benificiaries of TTP campaign:
IMF, WORLD BANK, SHAUKAT TAREEN..........
Of course the loosers are poor AWAM of Pakistan and school going girls of SAWAT
Last edited:
waraich66
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Is there any suiciod attack by TTP before US invasion in Afghanistan and before start of drone attacks?
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