In addition to all this, however, is the key part played by the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which resolved that the best way to sap the strength of al-Qaeda and the militants lay in cutting their financial arteries.
This is not a novel approach to root out militancy, but one that has not successfully been implemented by Pakistan.
Soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation targeted financial institutions and charities that supported al-Qaeda, with some success.
However, US institutions were unable to track the Taliban's financial arteries as these are mostly primitive, based on non-banking and non-traditional financial sources and tribal connections. Asia Times Online has documented how difficult it is to disrupt this flow of money. (See How the Taliban keep their coffers full Asia Times Online, June 10.)
Interior Minister Malik recognized the problem, and tackled it head-on, first with Baitullah's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP - Taliban Movement of Pakistan).
In an interview in New York, Malik confidently claimed that over 80% of the financial arteries of the TTP and al-Qaeda's funds coming from the Middle East had been blocked.
"The TTP's approach was unique in all aspects and it could have been very hard to trace. First, the TTP gathered information from Mehsud tribal people living in the Middle East. They were mostly skilled and unskilled labors who sent money to their families through hundi [non-banking money transfers]. The TTP contacted these labors, individually, and warned them that a certain percentage of the money they sent to their families should be remitted to the TTP," Malik said.
"We carefully studied the whole mechanism before we moved for a clampdown. The first thread of the strategy was the scanning and subsequent clampdown on illegal money transfers through hundi businesses. We studied all the business deals of the money exchange companies who were mostly involved in such transfers.
"Previously, Pakistan received US$3 billion to $4 billion [in remittances] through banking channels. After our operations on the money exchange companies, you will see that our [foreign exchange] reserves have soared [from $7 billion to $8 billion] to $14 billion to $15 billion as we have not left any choice to the remitters except to send their money through [regular] banking channels," Malik said, implying that the money the country now received from remittances had doubled.
"However, in this broader operation, we traced a triangular syndicate based in Pakistan comprising al-Qaeda, the TTP and the jihadi organizations, like the Laskhar-e-Jhangvi. Sometimes they got financial support from Middle Eastern philanthropists. Our intelligence agencies tracked the whole mechanism of how the money traveled from one hand to the other, so, for instance, money aimed for al-Qaeda benefited the whole syndicate. This syndicate had so strongly knitted its financial arteries together that they [militants] were able to hire a fighter for $500 per month," Malik said.
"After 9/11, security institutions tried to break down financial arteries. They spotted several institutions and successfully blocked their financial support. However, in the past few years, the dynamics of the money supply to those terror networks changed. They split themselves into segments and they developed a human chain network which could pass on cash from one hand to the other.
"In the past year, the situation became more complicated as the financial arteries feeding the insurgencies to this region and to Iraq were merged in our region," Malik said, adding that it happened because after the US military operation in Iraq against al-Qaeda, all top al-Qaeda operators relocated in North Waziristan and South Waziristan.
Having begun the process of strangling the financial lifeblood of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Islamabad now feels it is in a position to go for the jugular with an all-out military offensive. In Pakistan's eyes, this battle will be the start of the endgame. The militants might view it differently, as just the beginning of a real war.
it did teach me they are as capable as men in just about anything.
