# Taliban win £1,600 bounty for each Nato soldier killed



## GAP (23 May 2010)

Taliban win £1,600 bounty for each Nato soldier killed
Miles Amoore
Article Link

TALIBAN rebels are earning a bounty of up to 200,000 Pakistani rupees (£1,660) for each Nato soldier they kill, according to insurgent commanders.

The money is said to come from protection rackets, taxes imposed on opium farmers, donors in the Gulf states who channel money through Dubai and from the senior Taliban leadership in Pakistan.

So far this year 213 Nato soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, including 41 British troops, bringing the potential rewards for the Taliban to £350,000.

Taliban commanders said the bounty had more than doubled since the beginning of last year.

The insurgents, who employ “hit and run” tactics against foot patrols and convoys, use paid informants, media reports and the local population to confirm the deaths of Nato soldiers.

“We can’t lie to our commanders: they can check to see if there was a fight in that area. We get money if we capture equipment too. A gun can fetch $1,000 [£690],” said a commander from Khost province who controls about 60 fighters.

The money usually reaches commanders via the traditional hawala transfer system found in many Muslim countries. They then share it among their men and sometimes celebrate with a feast.

“It’s a lot of money for us. We don’t care if we kill foreigners: their blood allows us to feed our families and the more we kill, the more we weaken them. Of course we are going to celebrate this,” said a commander from Ghazni province.

The increase in rewards for Taliban fighters comes as the Afghan government prepares to present its strategy for ending the insurgency. This aims to lure less senior insurgents away from the fighting by offering them jobs in farming and engineering, vocational training in carpet weaving and carpentry, education and assimilation into the Afghan security forces, including the secret police.

President Hamid Karzai hopes that a peace jirga (tribal council) in Kabul next weekend will rally support for this peace and reintegration programme (PRP). 
More on link


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## dogger1936 (23 May 2010)

Instead of the "heroic restraint" medal they are proposing I suggest we learn from our enemies and  start offering 1600 CDN for a taliban body.


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## mariomike (23 May 2010)

That's 2,456.95 CAD:
http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi?Amount=1600&From=GBP&To=CAD&image.x=59&image.y=12

"In the agricultural sector, hourly wages in Afghanistan are about $1.90, compared with $1.70 in Pakistan, $1.10 in India, and $1.25 in Iran. The higher level of wages in the licit rural economy reflects strong competition for labor from the drug sector, especially during the poppy harvest.":
http://www.afghanemb-canada.net/downloads/unama_ext/fact_sheet.pdf

With 40% unemployment.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Afghanistan


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## harry8422 (23 May 2010)

dogger1936 said:
			
		

> Instead of the "heroic restraint" medal they are proposing I suggest we learn from our enemies and  start offering 1600 CDN for a taliban body.



I agree  :threat:


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## ballz (23 May 2010)

So then going by the 1.60/hr wage, they are offering about 1537 hrs pay? Probably almost a year's (38.425 x 40 hr work weeks) worth of hours for a lot of Canadians?

That is not petty cash they are offering...


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