Taliban gets most of it's money from Gulf States

More money is coming from the Gulf than is coming from the drug trade to the Taliban," AP

BRUSSELS — Taliban militants are receiving more funding from their sympathizers abroad than from Afghanistan's illegal drug trade, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan said Tuesday.[...]

"More money is coming from the Gulf than is coming from the drug trade to the Taliban," Holbrooke told journalists at NATO headquarters in Brussels. He didn't identify the countries where the sympathizers were donating from, but nations located on the Persian Gulf include Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq.

NATO military officials in Afghanistan have estimated that the Taliban raise $60-$100 million a year from the trade in illegal narcotics, which has ballooned since the 2001 invasion of the country by U.S.-led forces.[...]

"The money is coming in from sympathizers from all over the world with the bulk of it appearing to come from the Gulf," he said, adding that he did not have hard figures for the amount of overseas funding reaching the Taliban.

"What I believe happens is that the Taliban funds local operations in the Pashtun belt out of drug money, but the overall effort gets massive amounts of money from outside Afghanistan," Holbrooke said.