Taliban 'wealthier than al-Qaida'

The Taliban is in a much stronger financial shape than al Qaida and relies on a wide range of criminal activities to pay for attacks on US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, a US Treasury chief said.

David Cohen, the treasury department’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing, said the extremist group extorted money from poppy farmers and heroin traffickers involved in Afghanistan’s booming drug trade.

The Taliban also demanded protection payments from legitimate Afghan businesses, he said, during a speech at a conference on money laundering enforcement.

President Barack Obama and his top advisers are discussing whether many more troops may be needed in the eight-year-old Afghanistan conflict.

A critical part of the deliberations is whether the fight should be a more narrow one against al-Qaida or a broader battle against the Taliban-led uprising.

According to Mr Cohen, al-Qaida is a cash-strapped organisation that is losing its influence.

That was the product, he said, of a long-running effort by the US and its allies to cut off the terror group’s sources of funding by targeting its deep-pocketed donors and interfering with its ability to move money.

In the first half of 2009, he said, al-Qaida’s leaders made four public appeals for money to bolster recruitment and training.

“We assess that al-Qaida is in its weakest financial condition in several years, and that, as a result, its influence is waning,” Mr Cohen said at the conference, sponsored by the American Bankers Association and the American Bar Association.

But he warned that situation could reverse quickly because multiple donors “who are ready, willing and able to contribute to al-Qaida” still existed.

The Taliban, meanwhile, appears to be heading in the other direction despite an international effort to shut down the movement’s cash supply. Drugs are a major moneymaker for the group.

Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has said the Taliban get most of their cash from private benefactors in the Persian Gulf.

General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, said in his 66-page assessment of the war that the diversity of the Taliban’s streams of cash made it difficult to blunt its ability to operate.

Mr Cohen said portions of the Taliban’s illicit proceeds made their way out of the country and into the global financial system. But he did not specify how much or detail the money’s suspected entry points.