The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is backed by foreign money, terror networks and fighters coming over the border from Pakistan, the top UN envoy in Afghanistan said on Wednesday. But Tom Koenigs, the special UN representative, said the Pakistan government was not backing the Taliban, as it once did, because the militant Islamists were a threat to its stability as well. "We face a Taliban movement, which has apparently recovered and has to be answered by a series of measures, political as well as military," he told reporters after briefing the UN Security Council. Koenigs called the Taliban an insurgency that had taken hold in five Afghan southern provinces rather than just carrying out "some isolated terrorist acts." In the past three months, hundreds of people have been killed in hit-and-run raids and suicide bombings by Taliban guerrillas and their Islamic allies in the most intense period of the insurgency since the Taliban were removed from power in 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden.