Saga of Taliban's (Alleged?) PayPal Donations Site

[milnews.ca]

It's been a while since I posted, so if mods feel this is better someplace else, feel free to shift.

Just sharing some adventures in online fundraising (maybe) by the Taliban.

12 Dec 09: Spotted a new page allowing people to donate to the Taliban via PayPal or major credit card.

16 Dec 09: Someone posting to a jihadi forum says it's a fake.

17 Dec 09: It appears to be really associated with the Taliban because there's a link to the site from the Pashto-language version of their Voice of Jihad page.

27 Jan 10: Now, what appears to be an official Taliban statement on a jihadi forum says:

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.

The PayPal site still appears to work, though.

My theories:

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 concept, and are now dumping it.

3) The site was set up by the good guys to help lure and track dopey donors.

4) The site was set up by a cyber hacker as a scam.

Any other thoughts/ideas/theories?

[marct]

Might also have been done by a fellow traveller .

[anonamatic]

They could also be phishing for responses. It could be a huge screw up. There's not enough information to know.