Hanif Sufizada, The Conversation: The Taliban are megarich – here’s where they get the money they use to wage war in Afghanistan
The Taliban militants of Afghanistan have grown richer and more powerful since their fundamentalist Islamic regime was toppled by U.S. forces in 2001.
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 and later obtained by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
In comparison, the Afghan government brought in $5.55 billion during the same period.
I study the Taliban’s finances as an economic policy analyst at the Center for Afghanistan Studies. Here’s where their money comes from.
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WNU Editor: The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq were defeated when their sources for money were destroyed. Why this approach failed in Afghanistan is a question that should be analyzed and answered.
1 comment:
Unless the Taliban are keeping their money in an Afghan bank, they are keeping oit in a Pakistani bank. Pakistan is the devil.
Maybe it was an Iranian or UAE bank?
A former spec op who writes at SOFREP.com wrote that if you have not defeated the enemy in 3 years you are training them. Of course you get trained too, but in this case the Taliban got trained better, faster.
Bush had Pakistan go into SWAT in 2007/2008. They did. Was it a dog and pony show?
Obama had a surge. Right idea. Obama 1/2 assed it and the Pakistanis doubled down, whereupon the mean kid of the posh, private Punahou School, whose most aggressive move in middle and high school was to puck on girls and yank their pony tails but never a fist fight with another boy, folded like a putz.
By the time Trump came along, we had been in Afghanistan 15 years without victory. Trump did not promise a victory.
All surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, if there was one war or two wars, were transitory. The one in Iraq worked. It was part of a 1, 2 punch. People got sick of Al Qaeda and sided with the US. That is why that in part or mostly worked.
There was not enough contingency in contingency to sustain a surge beyond 6 months or a year. The establishment was not serious. But they are serious now with the printing presses doing what the Chinese cannot do. Going hypersonic in printing money.
Taliban taxation appears rather straight forward, the KISS principle. If they made it more complicated they would not do near so well.
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