A kidnapped Pakistani businessman had to pay more than 10 million rupees ($125,000) in ransom. When his Taliban captors freed him, he said, they told him, “Think of this as your zakat. Now your place in heaven is guaranteed.” “Taliban gains money, al-Qaida finances recovering,” by Kathy Gannon for the AP, June 21:
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) “” He moved his finger slowly across his throat, to show that the Taliban kills truckers who don’t pay for safe passage through large swaths of territory near Afghanistan.
“The situation is very dangerous for us. We give them money or our fuel, or they kill us,” said Ghadr Gul, a middle-aged trucker, who reluctantly spoke to The Associated Press outside his oil tanker. Along the road, storage depots are piled high with the burned-out hulks of vehicles destroyed by the Taliban.
As the Taliban gains power in Afghanistan and Pakistan, its money is coming mostly from extortion, crime and drugs, the AP found in an investigation into the financial network of militants in the region. However, funding for the broader-based al-Qaida appears to be more diverse, including money from new recruits, increasingly large donations from sympathizers and Islamic charities, and a cut of profits from honey dealers in Yemen and Pakistan who belong to the same Wahabi sect of Islam.[…]
The Taliban euphemistically refers to extortion money as tolls, taxes or even zakat, the 2.5 percent of donation to charity that Islam requires. A kidnapped Pakistani businessman had to pay more than 10 million rupees ($125,000) in ransom. When his Taliban captors freed him, he said, they told him, “Think of this as your zakat. Now your place in heaven is guaranteed.”