Treasury official: al Qaeda is hurting for cash, but the Taliban is flush

Posted By Josh Rogin Wednesday, April 7, 2010 - 9:53 PM Share

The good news about U.S. efforts to combat terrorist financing is that "al Qaeda core," the senior leadership of the organization, is so low on funds that its affiliates are forced to look outside the network to fund their activities.

The bad news is that the Taliban has plenty of money. And the European decision not to share some financial data is hurting America's ability to go after the funds, the U.S. Treasury Department's assistant secretary for terrorist financing, David Cohen, told a crowd at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Wednesday.

Al Qaeda is "in the worst financial shape it has been in for years," Cohen said, though he qualified that statement soon afterward. "Al Qaeda is not disabled, nor is it bankrupt."

Al Qaeda affiliates in Africa and on the Arabian Peninsula have been forced to rely less on the leadership and have taken up "independent fundraising activities," including drug trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, and extortion, Cohen said.

However, "unlike al Qaeda, the Taliban is not experiencing much financial stress," he added, explaining that the Taliban has plenty of money to conduct terrorist attacks, train and recruit soldiers, and fight against U.S. troops.

"The Taliban still has the funding necessary to fundamentally challenge our core national security objective of bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan," said Cohen.

Europe is being unhelpful on two fronts, Cohen complained. First of all, U.N. Security Council 1267, which is aimed directly at al Qaeda and the Taliban, "has come under attack, particularly in Europe," he said.

The resolution designates certain financiers for punishment and European courts are weighing cases regarding protections for those on the list. Cohen said subsequent resolutions provided for comprehensive reviews that address those concerns. Fifty-eight names have been taken off the list already, some because they are no longer financing terrorists and some because they died, he said.

More seriously, the European Parliament's February decision not to share data with the U.S. Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) has "created a gap in our ability to track financial transactions of terrorist organizations around the world," he said.

Since the data is stored on servers in Europe, the United States can't get at it, but Cohen said negotiations are ongoing and he hopes U.S. explanations about how the U.S. intends to use the data will allow an agreement to be signed soon.

"As of today, we have shared over 1550 TFTP reports with our colleagues," he said, "but ... the continued operation of the TFTP is in doubt."

EXPLORE:EUROPE, AFGHANISTAN, AL QAEDA, TALIBAN, TERRORISM

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SURESH SHETH

10:41 PM ET

April 9, 2010

Taliban is the puppet of Pakistani government

With US allowing Pakistan to dictate who Karzai should negotiate with in Taliban leadership, naturally the stock of Pakistan-supported Mullah Mohammed Omar's QST (Quetta Shura Taliban) has gone up.

There are three US blunders that are largely responsible for the failure of US mission and Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.

First, during the siege of Kunduz in November 2001, the Bush administration allowed Pakistan to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan from where Mullah Omar’s QST has been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

Second, Bush administration did NOT provide sufficient troops to secure Afghanistan against Taliban.

Third, Bush recruited Musharraf’s Pakistan to fight the very terrorist threat that Pakistan itself created. So Musharraf played duplicitous game of running with the hare while hunting with the hounds. While capturing and killing some Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders based on US intelligence, Musharraf continued to shelter, protect and support Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Quetta Shura Taliban in Quetta, provincial capital of Baluchistan and Haqqani network in North Waziristan.

Obama administration has continued the mollycoddling of Pakistan at the expense of Afghanistan.

The Obama Administration’s propensity to clutch at straws as it prepares for a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan has been its illusion that there has been a ‘turnaround’ in Pakistani policies of supporting the Taliban because of the arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the second-ranked Taliban leader, by a joint team of the CIA and ISI in Karachi. The reality appears to be that the CIA stumbled upon a Taliban hideout in Karachi and the arrest of Baradar was purely coincidental. More important, his arrest was an embarrassment, as Baradar was secretly —and unknown to the Pakistanis — in touch with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a UN Envoy.

Both Mr Karzai and Baradar are Durrani Pashtuns, sharing common tribal loyalties. An infuriated Karzai now finds his reconciliation efforts with the Taliban undermined, with the Pakistanis procrastinating on his demand for the extradition of Baradar to Afghanistan. Pakistan, which for years has denied the presence of the Mullah Omar-led ‘Quetta shura’ on its soil, now brazenly demands that it should be the prime intermediary in any process of reconciliation with the Taliban — a demand the Obama Administration appears to be meekly succumbing to.

JOHNMCGEE

9:42 PM ET

May 6, 2010

Interesting.... but how do they get cash?

Is it from Opium production? Is iran giving them a cash advance? It seems that we should be able to apply pressure to the financial systems they are exploiting if they are a significant enough threat.