Now that the Taliban have won, they want everyone else in the world to pay for Afghanistan’s upkeep. Their foreign minister has warned darkly of terrible suffering to come, if huge amounts of aid are not quickly forthcoming, and at once transferred to the Taliban, whose leaders are waiting with hands confidently outstretched in Eleemosynary Position #1. On September 13, more than $1 billion was pledged by donors, following warnings by the UN of a “looming catastrophe.” A day after that colossal sum was promised, the Taliban’s foreign minister nonetheless continued to call for aid, as if that $1 billion had not been enough.
In all of these pleas for money, the Taliban doesn’t want the world to know just how rich it is. In the fiscal year that ended in March 2020, the Taliban reportedly brought in US $1.6 billion, according to Mullah Yaqoob, son of the late Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who revealed the Taliban’s income sources in a confidential report commissioned by NATO.
Of that $1.6 billion, $416 million came from drugs – the sale of opium by the Taliban in markets abroad.
Mining iron ore, marble, copper, gold, zinc and other metals and rare-earth minerals in mountainous Afghanistan is an increasingly lucrative business for the Taliban. Both small-scale mineral-extraction operations and big Afghan mining companies pay Taliban militants to allow them to keep their businesses running. Those who don’t pay have faced death threats.
According to the Taliban’s Stones and Mines Commission, or Da Dabaro Comisyoon, the group earns $400 million a year from mining. NATO estimates that figure higher, at $464 million – up from just $35 million in 2016….
“Taxed” industries include mining operations, media, telecommunications and development projects funded by international aid. Drivers are also charged for using highways in Taliban-controlled regions, and shopkeepers pay the Taliban for the right to do business.
The group also imposes a traditional Islamic form of taxation called “ushr” – which is a 10% tax on a farmer’s harvest – and “zakat,” a 2.5% wealth tax.
According to Mullah Yaqoob, tax revenues – which may also be considered extortion – bring in around $160 million annually.
Then there are voluntary donations to the Taliban and the Haqqani Network affiliated to it. These come from charities and trusts in the Persian Gulf countries, a region historically sympathetic to the group’s religious insurgency. These add up to about $150 to $200 million each year. In addition, private citizens, mainly in Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states, as well as in Pakistan and Iran, send another $60 billion to the Haqqani Network.
The Taliban also makes money importing and exporting goods. It has a near-monopoly, for example, on the importing of auto parts. The exports include opium and looted minerals, so there may be financial overlap with drug and mining revenue. Mullah Yaqoob estimates that the Taliban makes $240 million a year from exports.
The Taliban also owns real estate in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and potentially other countries, according to Mullah Yaqoob. Yaqoob told NATO the Taliban’s annual real estate revenue is around $80 million.
The Taliban also receives funds, according to the CIA, from the governments of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran, according to numerous U.S. and international sources. Experts say these funds could amount to as much as $500 million a year, but it is difficult to put an exact figure on this income stream.
Possessing such enormous wealth, one wonders why the generous donors being asked to empty their pockets yet again for the “impoverished people of Afghanistan” do not ask the Taliban itself to pledge hundreds of millions of dollars to head off that “looming catastrophe” of hunger. Of course, why should the Taliban be expected to help “their people,” the Afghans, when dozens of foreign states can be inveigled into doing it all themselves. The Taliban is betting – correctly, I’m afraid – that the outside world hasn’t been paying attention to the Taliban’s enormous accumulation wealth, and will continue to answer the call for aid to be given to the “suffering Afghans.”
This brings me to another, very sore, point. There is one new source of colossal wealth for the Taliban. It now possesses more than $90 billion worth of American military equipment that had been left behind in the rush for the exits. Why shouldn’t the Taliban be asked to return some of that expensive weaponry, now that the fighting has ended, letting the Americans repossess it, in exchange for a goodly sum – say, a few billion dollars — in American aid to Afghan civilians, to be transferred over five years? How much of that advanced equipment can the Taliban operate, even if it does hold onto it? If the Taliban turns down that offer, it will look bad in the eyes of the world. Why, many will ask, does the Taliban need all that weaponry, since the group has been proclaiming its peaceful intentions? Having won the war, it now claims to be entirely peaceful, has no claims on territory elsewhere, and assures us that it will not permit terrorists to ever again use Afghanistan as a base. And if it turns down that most generous American offer of aid, would it want to be seen as callously indifferent to the misery of the Afghans, with tens of millions of them now living in poverty, by refusing such a sensible deal?
mortimer says
The world is supposed to pay INCOMPETENT managers so they can produce more terrorism and run the country further into the ground. That doesn’t make sense.
Grace says
Maybe they can sell some of the billions of dollars of war machines Biden gave them.
Del says
Well, Trudeau gets paid, so why mot his “brothers”?
Buraq says
Emotional blackmail. Plain and simple. Only a clown cannot see it.
Keith O says
And that is why Biden is giving them money! because he is at the bottom of the heap when it comes to IQ.
Johnny B says
If our leaders give billions to the Taliban so they can stay in power, what does that make our leaders? Well, financiers of the Taliban, of course! That’s a pretty scary thought by itself and we have to ask ourselves what’s next and where are we (as in the West) going from here?
Appeasement and submission to Islam can be seen everywhere, especially here in Europe where I’m at, and it has only just started. Think about it, within a single generation from now many of the largest European cities will have a majority of Muslims in them!!!
Michael Casmer says
No one ever said that Muslims make sense
Jim Grosso says
No surprises here.
PMK says
In addition, private citizens, mainly in Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states, as well as in Pakistan and Iran, send another $60 billion to the Haqqani Network.
Two percent of $80 billion is 1.2 billion. Tell these donors to fork over an additional two percent and the Taliban will be set. Any non-Muslim country that finances them should be shunned.
PMK says
Typo. It was $60 billion, not 80
CogitoErgoSum says
What? The fruits of victory provide no sustenance to them? I guess they need to tighten their belts a notch or two and spend a little more time farming and a little less time fighting … or is fighting the only thing they know how to do? Well, in that case I am sure Allah will reward them with all that they deserve …. if not in this life then in the next. I’m sure they can take comfort in believing that. I hope all their prayers for a life of eternal debauchery and gluttony someplace far beyond the cares of this world are answered as quickly as possible. Who could provide them with more than Allah could? Lengthening their lives here would just be depriving them of being with Allah. Of all things that I am guilty, I sure would hate most of all to be guilty of that.
somehistory says
You can’t have poverty without a lot of people. Thousands left the country, and the taliban…nice guys that they are…have been dispatching thousands? more…all those who disagree with them, all those in country who previously disagreed with them enough to tell outsiders…military from several countries…what was going on; women brave enough to have been police officers, judges, walk about without the garbage bags from head to toe…
And all those $100 bills that biden so generously gave them, the $64 million he and pelosi have given them, …didn’t they sell some of the $85 billion in weapons and equipment to iran? and they are still in the drug-dealing business….
With a diminishing population, and all of their ill-gotten gains, they are in a better position to feed the people…if that is what they really intended to do…than a lot of other places on earth.
But, that is not their intent. They are commanded by satan to extort, extort and extort…while they lie and lie and lie about it all.
I would tell them to hustle on over to their ‘paradise’ and leave the people to scrape by without them. But, they listen to satan, not to reason. And he’s a greedy demon.
JamesC. says
Why do they want money, that is clearly haram, from us filthy kuffar ? If they want it as jizya, well, they have not subjugated us – so we owe them nothing.
nicholas tesdorf says
This is a standard Muslim demand for payment of Jizyah from the Kuffar or Dhimmi.
Jizyah (جِزْيَة;) is a per capita yearly taxation historically levied in the form of financial charge on non-Muslim subjects (dhimmi) of a state governed by Islamic law.
Kepha says
As far as I’m concerned, the Taliban can eat the guns and aircraft that Biden left them. I’m sure China will pay them handsomely for US hardware to reverse-engineer; their terrorist allies worldwide will pay for firearms and ordnance. If all else fails, someone can open a thriving scrap metal business.
gravenimage says
Afghanistan: Taliban Demand a Billion Dollars in Aid to Stave Off Mass Poverty
……………….
The only reason Afghanistan is poor is because of Islam. They have one of the richest mineral and rare earth lodes in the world.
And yet their poverty is only going to get worse under the vicious Taliban.
And how much aid from the civilized world is apt to go to allieviating poverty there? Most of it will go to funding the Taliban’s Jihad terror.
Westman says
$80 Billion in booty and all they know how to do is make war and demand that the population conforms to Muhammad’s 7th century rules for warriors or be punished.
The Taliban have been mercenaries for 20 years, some from beginnings as child soldiers. It is not within their skill set to manage the minutia of good government nor is it found in the Quran and Hadith. Sharia Law is a ham-fisted force that yields nothing of beauty nor advances the population. But it can be administered by force, the only real skill of the Taliban.
Send the Taliban money and it will be used for war and much will be stolen through corruption.
James Lincoln says
Westman says,
“…force, the only real skill of the Taliban.”
100% spot on.
gravenimage says
Yep.
Arthur says
why co they want money? they just set up perfect system there, they should be very very rich….but islam means slavery and poverty
gravenimage says
Islam demands tribute (jizya, aid, ransom, etc) from the ‘filthy Infidels’.
Ade Fegan says
So sell of one 85th of the arms Biden gave you and feed them yourself
Xavier Basora says
They have 85 billion in American weaponry to sell. So what happened? The Pakistanis, Chinese already grabbed the advanced expensive stuff already?
Seriously.