An anonymous NATO official “pointed to an internal assessment that there are 500,000 to 1 million ‘disaffected’ men between the ages of 15 and 25 in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. Most are Afghan Pashtuns, and they make up some of the 95 percent of the insurgency who carry out attacks just to earn money, rather than to fight for a hard-core Taliban ideology, he said.”
– Barbara Starr, “NATO Official: Bin Laden, Deputy Hiding in Northwest Pakistan,” CNN, Oct. 18, 2010