Pakistan in Media

The News International, Pakistan, Friday, July 31, 2009
War-fighting is an expensive business, and every bullet costs money. We have a defence budget and assorted parcels of aid to pay for the war against the Taliban we are currently engaged in; but the Taliban have to find other ways of paying for their armaments and materiel. Some of it they acquire by old-fashioned thievery but recent years have seen a much greater diversity and complexity in their funding arrangements. Richard Holbrooke speaking to journalists in the NATO headquarters in Brussels said that their most lucrative source of income was money donated by sympathisers outside of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that it was a mistake to assume that the bulk of their income was derived from drug money. The money was coming from the Gulf States, including those to whom we are closely allied, but was coming from individuals and small organisations, not from the governments of Gulf States – a point Holbrooke was keen to emphasise given the sensitivity of what he was saying. It was also coming from Western Europe, where there is a large Muslim community many of whom are sympathetic to the Taliban cause. The manufacture and sale of illegal drugs still pulls in a significant sum -- $60-$100 million a year. It was Holbrooke's opinion (and he offered no supporting evidence) that the drug money funds local operations in the Pashtun tribal belt whilst the money raised elsewhere funded other operations.
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