salmakh84
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WASHINGTON: The Taliban in Afghanistan are running a sophisticated financial network to pay for their insurgent operations, raising hundreds of
millions of dollars from the illicit drug trade, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they are struggling to cut off.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed an elaborate system to tax the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, as well as other crops like wheat grown in the territory they control, American and Afghan officials say. In the Middle East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries to keep the insurgency's coffers brimming with cash.
Estimates of the Taliban's annual revenue vary widely. Proceeds from the illicit drug trade alone range from $70 million to $400 million a year, according to Pentagon and UN officials. By diversifying their revenue stream beyond opium, the Taliban are frustrating American and Nato efforts to weaken the insurgency by cutting off its economic lifelines, the officials say.
Despite efforts by the United States and its allies in the last year to cripple the Taliban's financing, using the military and intelligence, American officials acknowledge they barely made a dent.
"I don't believe we can significantly alter their effectiveness by cutting off their money right now," said Representative Adam Smith, a Washington State Democrat on the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan last month. "I'm not saying we shouldn't try. It's just bigger and more complex than we can effectively stop."
The Taliban's ability to raise money complicates the Obama administration's decision to deploy more US troops to Afghanistan. It is unclear, for example, whether the deployment of 10,000 Marines over the summer to Helmand Province, the heart of the opium production, will have a sustaining impact on the insurgency's cash flow. And American officials are debating whether cracking down on the drug trade will anger farmers dependent on it for their livelihood.
But even if the US and its allies were able to stanch the money flow, it is not clear how much impact it would have. It does not cost much to train, equip and pay for the insurgency in impoverished Afghanistan fighters typically earn $200 to $500 a month and to bribe local Afghan security and government officials.
"Their operations are so inexpensive that they can be continued indefinitely even with locally generated resources such as small businesses and donations," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service and a former analyst of the region at the CIA.
American officials say that they have been surprised to learn in recent months that foreign donations, rather than opium, are the single largest source of cash for the Taliban.
"In the past there was a kind of a feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan," Richard Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in June. "That is simply not true."
Supporting this view, in his August 30 strategic assessment, Gen Stanley McChrystal, the top Nato commander in Afghanistan, voiced skepticism that clamping down on the opium trade would crimp the Taliban's overall finances.
"Eliminating insurgent access to narco-profits even if possible, and while disruptive would not destroy their ability to operate so long as other funding sources remained intact," General McChrystal said.
The CIA recently estimated in a classified report that Taliban leaders and their associates had received $106 million in the past year from donors outside Afghanistan, a figure first reported last month by the Washington Post. Private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations are the largest individual contributors, an American counterterrorism official said.
Top American intelligence officials and diplomats say there is no evidence so far that the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or other Persian Gulf states are providing direct aid to the Afghan insurgency.
But American intelligence officials say they suspect that Pakistani intelligence operatives continue to give some financial aid to the Afghan Taliban, a practice the Pakistani government denies.
The United States Treasury Department and the United Nations have for years maintained financial blacklists of those suspected of being donors to the Taliban and al-Qaida. But counterterrorism officials say donors have become savvier about disguising their contributions to avoid detection.
"The sanctions have worked to a certain extent but obviously not to the extent of being able to cut off all funds," said Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence officer now monitoring al-Qaida and the Taliban for the United Nations.
Agreed. Bogus Report. Proof? Classified reports leaking as water..??
Estimated of 70$ Million to 400$ Million... lolss.. who is making these estimates and how? If the estimate was 70-80$million or$ 400-500 million, it might have been believable! But a difference of 500% in estimates!!
Its like saying, the GDP of America is anywhere between 5 trillion to 25 trillion $$$$ according to estimates. lolz
The west and its allies just want to blame their embarrassment at something else...
