Remember the back and forth on the Taliban’s PayPal donations page? Well, there’s a new twist. The PayPal page itself is still in operation as of this post, but now, the Taliban have issued an official denial (Arabic – Google English – PDF at non-terrorist site):
Inform you that he does not have a note of the Islamic Emirate of any program or site to collect donations on the Web (Internet). Every site or person (on the network) claims that he collected donations for the Islamic Emirate is a charlatan and a liar, which aims to raise money for itself in a way dirty and irresponsible. We dissociate ourselves from those sites and persons altogether.
Originally, the PayPal link at alemrah.info was part of the Voice of Jihad’s official Pashto page (PDF of screen capture at non-terrorist site), but now, it’s no longer there (PDF of latest screen capture at non-terrorist site – check page 3 to see no more alemrah.info).
So, what’s this mean? Here are three possibilities:
1) The site is still linked to the Taliban, but the Taliban is trying to discourage folks from using it lest PayPal collect information of interest to those hunting bad guys.
2) The Taliban tried the PayPal concept, and are now dumping it.
3) The site was set up by the good guys to help lure dopey donors.
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