Taliabn funding itself from kidnappings in Karachi and elsewhere

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Fascinating story on how a retried army major connected to a taliban-allied jihadi group kidnapped a prominent person from Karachi and too him to Bannu through Sohrab goth.

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

Second Editorial: Kidnappings could be the last straw

The latest successful kidnapping and release on ransom of Pakistani filmmaker Satish Anand from Bannu tells us about the depth of the danger Pakistani society faces. Reportedly, Mr Anand’s family paid Rs 1.6 crore to get him back after haggling with the kidnappers since October 2008 when he was picked up from Karachi. For those who think there is no threat to Karachi from the Taliban, let it be revealed that Mr Anand was kept for some time in Sohrab Goth before being whisked away to Bannu. A police raid at Sohrab Goth, a Pashtun no-go area, was unsuccessful, with police casualties.

**The track led to Bannu after one Major (retd) Haroon Rashid was arrested in Rawalpindi and confessed to having kidnapped the filmmaker with the help of a supposedly defunct jihadi militia Harkat-ul Mujahideen. This is the organisation that was once very close to Al Qaeda as well as the agencies that conducted the proxy war in Kashmir. Its two top leaders are known for supporting Al Qaeda when it was located in Sudan but fell out after 1999. Masood Azhar set up his Jaish-e Muhammad and separated from the mother organisation Harkat-ul Mujahideen, which is still run by Fazlur Rehman Khaleel.

Today, the Jaish is aligned with Al Qaeda and supplying suicide-bombers to Baitullah Mehsud, and its leader Masood Azhar, at one point officially under house arrest in Bahawalpur, has now “officially” disappeared from Pakistan. Fazlur Rehman Khaleel was last seen as a “go-between” during the Lal Masjid standoff in 2007. In Bannu, all these vectors have met and money has passed to the terrorists. Ominously, kidnappings may have trumped the other sources of income for the terrorists. In a meeting of local industrialists and investors in Karachi on Saturday, it was revealed that kidnappings were the only device that might actually persuade the Pakistani entrepreneurs to give up on Pakistan. ***

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Re: Taliabn funding itself from kidnappings in Karachi and elsewhere

yes it can be a source of funding for taliban but the group mentioned is independent group.

to give you an idea taliban guys are paying rs 6-7000 rs to a foot soldier they have modern wireless communication system which is costly, and heavy weapons caches now can anyone think this can be financed with mere kidnappings No..
there is Drug money involved and an outside state supporting them..

above example which is quoted is a group of 8-10 who needs to finance a mission and one or two kidnappings a year enough for them to keep on going.

Timepass - March 2013