"...The Taliban received substantial financial help from ... Saudi Arabia, the UAE & Pakistan.."

WaPo, here

".... Some American and Afghan officials said the U.S. government, which had been a leading nominator of names for the U.N. blacklist, paid less attention to Taliban donors after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Until recently, they said, Washington had also been preoccupied with preparing sanctions against individuals and companies doing business with the Iranian government.

Richard Barrett, the coordinator of the United Nations' Taliban and al-Qaeda Monitoring Team, said Taliban sympathizers are much more skillful today at masking their donations and ensuring that the money cannot be traced back to them. "It's been very, very difficult to identify these people," Barrett said. "You can track the money flow and say this money came from the Gulf, but it's a lot more difficult to confirm the source."

In July, Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the Taliban was reaping the bulk of its revenue from donors abroad, especially from the Persian Gulf.

Other U.S. officials have noted that the Taliban received substantial financial help from Gulf countries during the 1990s, when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- along with Pakistan -- were the only nations that gave diplomatic recognition to the Taliban government.

"The international community and the Americans have been deceiving themselves for the past seven years, saying the Taliban has been getting all of their money from drugs," said Waheed Mojda, who served as a Foreign Ministry official for the Taliban before the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001............"