The TTP’s funding

Dawn Editorial

Perhaps one of the least understood aspects of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan is how it finances its activities. An insurgency is an expensive business to carry on: arms and ammunition have to be purchased, communication systems set up, salaries have to be paid to the rank and file and commanders, compensation has to be given to the families of suicide bombers — hundreds of millions of rupees, more likely billions, are needed.

Where does the money come from? Initially, private donations from Karachi, Lahore, the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, etc were funneled to the Taliban’s coffers through informal banking channels. In the years since 9/11 some of those routes were shut down, but there is little doubt that a sizeable amount still goes through such channels into the Taliban’s baitul maal. Then there is the Afghan Taliban and their earnings from the drug trade in Afghanistan and their more sophisticated front companies that make investments regionally and internationally and plough some of the money back into insurgency-related activities in Fata.

Clearly, Pakistan and the international community need to do more to follow these trails of money and devise new ways to reduce the flow as much as possible.

There is also the control that the TTP has over economic activities in Fata and, until recently, the northwest. With large swathes of territory under the de facto control of the TTP, the militants have been able to set up check posts and charge ‘customs duties’ on goods moving through those territories. And in Swat, the TTP took a slice of the earnings of the timber mafias operating there and also briefly controlled the lucrative emerald mines. All of this was possible because the TTP physically controlled these areas — wherever they continue to be in control, they will be able to raise funds for their activities.

Perhaps the simplest way for the TTP to generate cash is by robbing banks. The quickest infusion of cash of course comes from walking into a bank and emptying its vault and looting its customers. From Karachi to the Malakand division, across the length and breadth of the country, many bank robberies in recent times have been linked to the TTP. It is difficult to put a figure on the amounts involved given that national data on such crimes is not readily available, but it is easily in the range of tens of millions of rupees. Finally, there is the kidnapping route.

In Islamabad, Peshawar, Karachi, even in smaller cities and the tribal areas, rings of kidnappers pick and choose who they will target next from among the rich. The state must work harder to clamp down on these networks which generate easy cash for the militants — every extra rupee raised by them is another rupee available to help the militants fight the state.