Taliban's gem of an idea to finance terror

[Turborama]

Source: Mid Day

The guerilla fighters are mining emerald in Swat to finance their fight against Pakistan

By: Anshuman G Dutta

=snip=

Once the madrasa students of the yore - the Taliban - now controls the world's second largest emerald mines in the world that have come as a gift with the territory of Swat valley in Pakistan. The jihadists know the importance of the resource and intelligence agencies have confirmed that they are mining the gemstone with amazing speed to fuel their ongoing war with the Pakistan army.

=snip=

The Pakistan government has not admitted the fact as yet but it is popular knowledge that local Pakistani populace has been recruited to dig out the emerald from the mines.

"Presently people in Swat valley are paid about Rs 400 per day to dig emeralds from these mines. These gems can fetch anything from $ 1000 to $ 10,000 in the international markets due to their high quality," said Urvashi J Kumar, Research Officer, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS).

=snip=

Pankaj Jha, associate fellow, Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA) and a known security expert of the south Asia region said, "Taliban has almost corporatised its funding system. Its main sources of fund used to be poppy cultivation only which is still under demand in the international market. The access to emerald mines has given a much larger fund base assuring it a proper supply of arms and ammunitions," he said.

Read more: http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/may/130509-Taliban-Pakistan-army-Swat-guerilla-fighters-war.htm

[Soylent Brice]

1. how ironic.

""Taliban has almost corporatised its funding system."

[Spinzonner]

2. Are they planning any acquisitions or hostile takeovers ?

Other than the obvious

[Soylent Brice]

4. the irony is

that they are using capitalist methods to finance they're bullshit.

the hostile takeover will be islamabad seemingly within months.

[HillWilliam]

3. Pat Robertson has been using diamonds to finance

his own Talibabdists in the US but few have said a damned word about it.

The poor continue to be exploited, the rich continue to leverage their own form of Gawd-ah to terrorize and amass power to themselves.

Nothing new here, everyone just move along (sigh)

[Coventina]

5. The military junta running Burma (Myanmar) gets a lot of their $$$

from gemstones, particularly rubies.

They cross the border to Thailand, and then are conveniently registered as Thai jewels.

It's sad that objects of beauty become the pawns of evil.

[HillWilliam]

6. One of many reasons

I have long, long refused to wear or trade in jewelry of any kind. Diamonds are blood. Any gemstone is worth only whatever some fool is willing to pay for it and the ones who are made to scratch them from the earth at hard labor rarely see more than pennies on the hundred for their exploitation.

If the balloon goes up, you can't eat them or use them for fuel; they're useless and would be valueless. They're the poorest investment and any investor will tell you so. They're easily stolen, fenced and almost irrecoverable once gone. A fool's choice of possession.

But that doesn't stop fools from lusting after possessing them. It doesn't stop those fools from continuing the cycle of exploitation and terror they so happily, thoughtlessly, and readily finance just to suit their own vanities.

If there's an afterlife, if there's karma, they'll have to reckon with it on their own. I hope they can deal with the enormous weight of it. It'll be a bitch.