The colour of the rupee

The committee to negotiate with the Taliban, its composition and why Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif apparently changed his mind at the very last minute and decided to go in for dialogue is, naturally enough, the talk of the day.

The naming of its own team of negotiators takes the debate even further – and even as the pro-talks, pro-operation arguments rage, many ask what Mian Nawaz Sharif’s actual line of thought is, and how he will finally decide on a matter that is, of course, of immense importance as far as the future of our country goes.

But as the process begins, as we read columns in the newspapers written by a member of the government’s negotiating team praising the Al-Qaeda head Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri as an ‘exalted figure’ compared to whom we are mere insects, we wonder where all this will lead. The demand for Shariah put forward by the Taliban, matches the quest made in 1998 by Sharif to make the same law supreme in the land through the 15th Amendment Bill – even if gaining supreme power as amirul momineen was perhaps the main motive for this. But regardless of the past, it is hard to say where talks will lead. Similar efforts have repeatedly failed in the past.

Another question arises here. Are there other ways to stop the Taliban – or at least damage them? Whenever it comes to battling terrorist groups around the world, a key question is their source of funding. Without money no outfit can operate successfully, notably not on the scale of the Taliban. Rupees, or better still dollars or pounds, are required to purchase arms, run training camps, recruit new members and acquire the sophisticated technology the militants are so adept at using.

Not enough effort seems to have gone into exploring this angle, and determining if there are ways to cut off the fuel lines which keep the Taliban engine running.

We know too little about these reservoirs of fuel, and we wonder how much our intelligence agencies have done to investigate this issue. From what has been published, we know that the Afghan Taliban for some time funded their Pakistani counterparts. Their own funding has, ironically enough, been whittled away in many cases from aid provided by the US for developmental projects in the country – through extortionist, corruption and other underhand means.

Washington has failed to prevent its own money from going straight into the hands of its arch-enemy – despite questions raised in Congress over how the Taliban were actually being financed by Washington.

But in recent months, the money coming through from Afghanistan, along with the arms, is stated to have begun to die out. Differences within diverse Taliban factions are stated to be a factor in this. But the Taliban in the country seem able to stay up and running. How do they manage? Again, going by what some Taliban figures have said and by media reports, donors based in the UK, the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia all provide considerable sums of money.

It is hard to understand why it has not been possible to trace these roots of currency transfer and crack down on them. The fact that some of them come from powerful states in the Middle East, both from Pakistanis living there and other sources, makes the task potentially more complex.

Beyond this, there are also local ‘philanthropists’ who give to the Taliban or to groups allied to them. The donations going into the coffers of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi would be fascinating to follow. Rumour goes there are some influential figures who back the sectarian force. We must not forget that, specifically during the 1990s, the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan – from which the LeJ arose – made a concerted effort to liaise with bureaucrats, politicians, police officers and others in positions from which they could receive backing. The tactics appear to have worked.

But from the perspective of state, we must keep in mind that those who make it possible for militants to fire gunshots at Hazaras or other Shias are just as guilty for the death that follows as the gunmen themselves. It is this money that needs to be cut off and snatched away.

Fully aware of this, the highly savvy Taliban have also developed their own methods to generate funds. This involves engagement in the kidnapping, extortion and robbery business. Links with criminal mafias are said to have been evolved for this purpose with considerable sums of money coming in from these activities. How much we cannot say. But certainly a rough calculation of the amounts paid out in ransom by doctors and other professionals in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Karachi and other places suggests the sums are not insignificant.

Indeed, the Taliban move into Karachi is said to have been motivated chiefly by a need to pick up more money to keep their ‘business’ running efficiently without any holdup in the flow of bills. They have certainly succeeded in this.

The idea that the Taliban are poor persons, in bare feet fighting desperately for the rights of others like them, is at any rate flawed. People from tribal areas and others where they have held sway speak of the lavish houses they have been able to construct and the cars that they drive. It also takes money to hide key leaders and those apparently kidnapped by groups affiliated with the Taliban. All this cannot happen without the blue, green and red rupee currency notes pouring in – in wads of sizeable thickness. It is this flow that needs to be stopped.

The effort to do so could coincide with the talks effort currently moving ahead. Where it will lead we do not know. Perhaps there will be some temporary cease fire, some element of peace. But even so, eventually for the sake of the safety of all of us, the Taliban empire has to be broken up and taken apart. The best means to achieve this may be to prevent it from thriving and making it harder and harder for the Taliban to haul in the cash that is obviously necessary to any group operating as they do, with money required at any stage for purposes of surveillance or the actual carrying out of operations and the building of a stronger and stronger illegal militia.

A main direction of attack in this war, which must involve acumen and strategy, must be to starve the Taliban of money and thereby make it more difficult for them to carry out the operations that result in so much death and allow the group a hold over the country which right now they seem to be in no mood to relinquish.

It is important also to discover where pockets of support for the Taliban lie so that individuals or groups giving money to them can also be identified and acted against as part of a wider bid to prevent the growth of a force that has already inflicted a huge amount of damage on our country and indeed torn it apart bit by bit.

It is unclear if any initiative at all has been taken in breaking up links between the Taliban and mafias or detecting where their funds come in from, where these are and who has access to them. This task needs to be made a priority.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com. The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor