• by IPS Correspondents (peshawar, pakistan)
• Monday, August 20, 2012
• Inter Press Service

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug 20 (IPS) - For the past five years Sharifullah Shah, a local doctor from the conflict-ridden North Waziristan province in Pakistan, has handed over 500 dollars to the Taliban during the month of Ramadan. But this year, he is putting his money straight into the Edhi Welfare Centre, where he knows it will reach those in need.

“I know the (Centre) uses this money to educate and care for orphaned local children, while the Taliban insurgents just pump my money into their violent actions,” Shah told IPS, adding that his donations to the Taliban were tantamount to “aiding terrorism”.

Across Taliban-controlled areas in Pakistan, former supporters are turning their backs on the group, angered by the unrelenting violence. “We have been giving 2.5 percent of our earnings in Zakat to the Taliban for the past 10 years because we wanted our money to be spent in the service of Allah but this year we stopped because the Taliban killed people in terrorist attacks using our money,” Umar Gul, a cloth-merchant in old Peshawar city, told IPS.

A regular and generous donor to the Taliban, Gul now wishes he had never made those contributions. At the end of 2001, when U.S.-led coalition forces toppled the government in neighbouring Afghanistan, people swarmed the donation camps, established by religious parties on behalf of the Taliban, because they held the latter in high esteem, believing them to be defenders of Islam.

“Now, they (Taliban) have become kidnappers, extortionists and killers of humanity,” Gul stressed.

A local prayer leader told IPS that the Taliban had once been a primary recipient of the huge charitable donations made during Ramadan. Now, with the group refusing to cease hostilities even out of respect for the holy month, people are more and more reluctant to loosen their purse strings in the service of violence.

“We, the Muslims, are of the firm belief that the month of Ramadan brings a plethora of blessings for human beings and those who resort to killing and injuring during this time have no relation to Islam,” he said. “My followers used to hand more than 1000 dollars to a jihadist group working under the umbrella of Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP) every Ramadan but they have plainly refused to pay them donations anymore,” he added.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, spokesman of the Awami National Party government in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, whose only son was killed by militants in July 2010, echoed these sentiments. “Islam preaches brotherhood and peace while the Taliban are doing exactly the opposite. We (requested) the Taliban to desist from militancy during Ramadan but all such pleas fell on deaf ears,” he lamented. With donations slowing to a trickle, Taliban militants have resorted to bank robberies and kidnapping for ransom, he added.

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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