The Taliban Goes Broke -- Sami Yousafzai and Sam Seibert, Vocativ
Afghanistan’s insurgents have endured hard times before, but nothing quite like this. A look at the group's crippling financial crisis
Mullah Yaseen is penniless. Wrapped in a heavy black coat, the 45-year-old Afghan insurgent huddles inside a heatless tea shop near the Pakistani-Afghan border and pours out his troubles. Over the past eight months, he and his 15 Taliban fighters have received no support from the group’s central command, Yaseen says. Not a bullet or a cent.
The winter snows were just melting last year when Yaseen traveled from his home village in eastern Afghanistan to the city of Quetta, in southwestern Pakistan. That’s where most of the Afghan insurgency’s top leadership is based, and Yaseen needed to requisition supplies and ammunition for the fighting season ahead.
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My Comment: With U.S. forces withdrawing .... there is no need for the Taliban's foreign donors to provide money. And while I am sure that the Afghan Taliban will still earn revenues from drugs, other donors, and criminal activities .... if these reports of funding draw-downs are true .... the days of the Taliban being a potent force may be facing a decline. Meanwhile ... the bloodshed continues in Afghanistan.
2 comments:
Most of the money supplied by the 'foreign donors' is finding its way back in the cargo planes to various countries involved in money laundering associated with the western allies.
Taliban made very little money from 'foreign donors.' If Taliban is going broke absolutely no one in the western media will report, the same way no one in the very same western media is reporting about the conditions of schools and colleges in Afghanistan.
What this article is all about is SIGINT that round-trip money-laundering using Afghanistan to enrich the Swiss, Caribbean, Brunei, Dubai and Greek Banks are in its last days IF the Afghans do not sign the Security Pact Agreement giving free reign to crimes.
Taliban controls much of the country. The ANA cooperates with Taliban in many areas. The Afghan 'government' and US diplomats are confined to Kabul, and the US military must conduct its logistics retrograde in the air because the highways are unsafe. Taliban gets plenty of financial support from criminal activities including corruption, from Pakistan and from drug sales.
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