Where's the Beef Cyril?

Cyril is playing with the truth. Or he is skirting it. In today's column he singles out Mehsud and writes:

One of Mehsud’s favourite fund-raising techniques is kidnapping the rich in cities in the north, and even as far away as Karachi in the south. At the moment the going rate at the high end is Rs90m. Do the math: 35 such victims a year comes to over Rs3bn.

Even if we accept this, the larger questions remain unanswered. Baitallah Mahsud is only one of the dozens of groups thumping their noses at the Centre. Not all of them have the network to abduct and blackmail.

Surely there are finances available to all of them.

Yes, some support comes from local denizens, who have it up to their necks and want some semblance of law and order. But being poor they cannot dole out the moolah.

So that leaves the "donations." Not the zakat and ushr collected from the mosques, but big time "donations."

We have heard variously, the ISI (recall Asghar Khan's case that our honourable Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary has yet to find time to settle?), the CIA, Iran, Soodi Umrika, Russia, China, UAE, and your neighbour's chaprasi - they all deliver sack-fulls of greenback to these usurpers.

Cyril, follow the money. It will yield answers that may shock all of us.