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Variety of sources feeding Taliban war chest: NYT |
A sophisticated financial network appears to be paying for the Taliban insurgent
operations, and some of the sources include the illicit drug trade, criminal activity,
kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they
are struggling to cut off. According to the New York Times, 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. In the Middle East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries
to keep the insurgency's coffers brimming with cash. Proceeds from the illicit
drug trade alone range from 70 million dollars to 400 million dollars a year,
according to Pentagon and United Nations 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," the paper quoted Representative
Adam Smith, a Washington State Democrat on the House Intelligence and Armed Services
Committees who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan last month, as saying. "I'm
not saying we shouldn't try. It's just bigger and more complex than we can effectively
stop," he added. American officials are debating whether cracking down on the
drug trade will anger farmers dependent on it for their livelihood. But even if
the United States and its allies were able to stanch the money flow, it is not
clear how much impact it would have. The C.I.A. recently estimated in a classified
report that Taliban leaders and their associates had received 106 million dollars
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
counter-terrorism 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. 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. Drugs play an important role. Afghanistan produces
more opium than any other country in the world, and the Taliban are widely believed
to make money at virtually every stage of the trade. Counter-terrorism experts
warn that the relationship of the insurgents to drug trafficking is shifting in
an ominous direction. The United States has created two new entities aimed at
disrupting the trafficking networks and illicit financing. One group, the Afghan
Threat Finance Cell, is located at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul. The second
group, the Illicit Finance Task Force based in Washington, also aims to identify
and disrupt the financial networks supporting terrorists and narcotics traffickers
in the region. American officials say they are working closely with the Afghan
government to dry up the Taliban financing, but as one senior American military
officer in Afghanistan put it last week, "I won't overstate the progress." |
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