South Asia Studies Project

November 9, 2010 Special Dispatch No.3362 Pakistani Commentator Ali K. Chishti: '[The Saudi] Kingdom, to This Day, is the Biggest Source of Official and Private Funding to… Jihadist Organizations in Pakistan…; Pakistani Government Gives Out an Estimated 20-35 Billion Pakistani Rupees in Grants to Madrassas and Jihadi Movements' In a recent article, senior Pakistani commentator Ali K. Chishti expressed concern that the Pakistani government and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continue to fund various Islamist organizations and jihadist movements in Pakistan. In the article, titled "Funding Pakistan's Jihad," Chishti noted that the Pakistani government continues to dole out funds to Islamist madrassas and will never cut its ties to the jihadist groups, because doing so will impact on its foreign policy objectives in South Asia. Chishti observed: "Every time the Americans start getting impatient, the Pakistanis make a show of launching an operation in the tribal belt. There are arrests of Afghan and Arab jihadis or the killings of certain individuals until everything returns to normal." The full text of this report is available to MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor Subscribers. Subscription information is available at this link. JTTM subscribers can visit this page to view the report.