Pakistan's Karachi the Taliban revenue engine - mayor

Pakistan's biggest city and commercial hub of Karachi is the revenue engine of the Taliban who pose a threat to the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan from city no-go areas, Karachi's mayor said on Wednesday.

The city of 18 million people generates 68 percent of the government revenue and 25 percent of Pakistan's gross domestic product but it is vulnerable to both militant attacks and political violence, said mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal.

"As Karachi is the revenue engine for Pakistan, it's the same revenue engine for the Taliban," Kamal told Reuters in an interview in his office.

Karachi has been largely free of militant attacks over the past two years which Kamal put down to his party's strong and popular stand against militancy combined with effective security operations.

Kamal said a large proportion of supplies bound for U.S.-led forces in landlocked Afghanistan arrive at Karachi's port, which he said was still vulnerable to an attack that could cripple the U.S. war effort.

"If they don't get their water supply through this route the next day they'll be drinking Afghan water and the next day half the army will have stomach problems," he said.

Four hundred million rupees ($4.8 million) had recently been sent from one Karachi bank branch to various parts of the northwest in one month, he said."That's abnormal," he said. "For sure, the biggest chunk of Taliban war ... resources are going from Karachi."

Kamal is a member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which represents mohajirs, the descendents of Urdu-speaking people who migrated from India after the creation of Pakistan in 1947.