How the terrorist groups get financed and sponsored in Afghanistan and the region?

According to confidential source, high-ranking Taliban leaders in collaboration with private businesspersons abroad run a number of businesses.

Taliban leaders transferred drug money from Afghanistan to Waziristan camps in 2001 after the fall of their first regime, and most of the leaders have since used that money in Dubai, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and a number of other Gulf countries, started private businesses.

Since 2001, large sums of money have been sent to the Waziristan camps by Arab traders to spend on their fighters, but 70% of that money went to the Pakistani military and 30% was distributed among them.

In addition, 10 percent of the money from the poppy and Heroin cultivation in the southwestern provinces of Afghanistan and Nangarhar was transferred to the Taliban’s personal budget.

According to a 2021 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by eight percent compared to 2020, because all the security agencies of the country were engaged in the battlefield with the Taliban, and such a situation would allow drug growers to increase opium poppy cultivation.

According to the report, the amount of narcotics in Afghanistan reached 6800 tons in 2021. The world’s black market and mafia networks seized about 320 tons of pure heroin from the opium of Afghanistan.

According to UNODC research, Afghanistan’s opium revenue in 2021 was between 1.8 billion and 2.7 billion, One-tenth of this money was transferred to the Taliban’s stockpile of money, and the Taliban received a certain amount of money from the narcotics farmers under the pretext of Zakat.

According to Hanif Sufizada, an economic policy analyst at the Center for Afghanistan Studies: In fiscal year 2019-2020 alone, the Taliban received 1.6 billion from various sources. Significantly, the Taliban earned 416 million from opium sales that year, 400 million from mining such as iron, marble and gold, and received 240 million in funding from private donors and groups.

In addition, the Taliban were then illegally extracting some money from Afghanistan’s mines. The remote areas of Afghanistan, which are rich in iron, copper, lithium and other rare earth minerals, were under Taliban control.

The Taliban illegally extracted those minerals and minerals by the help of smugglers, earned between 400-460 million. Afghanistan, which has about a trillion dollars’ worth of rare earth minerals and minerals, is still one of the poorest countries in the world.

This is because the country’s minerals are being smuggled illegally; the profits go to the Taliban and other mafia groups and smugglers.

Lithium and cobalt are among the most valuable minerals in Afghanistan’s underground minerals that the world is eager to acquire, particular China and Japan, which have large car factories.

All of these minerals were smuggled illegally by the help of Taliban from Afghanistan to Pakistan first by smugglers and then sold by Pakistani smugglers to Chinese private companies at double the price.

All the way through money has reached Pakistan and the Taliban leaders, but Afghanistan has become a center of poverty.

According to intelligence reports, between 2017 and 2019, Chinese private and state-owned companies were involved in illegal mining deals with the Taliban through Pakistani smugglers, in this way, the Taliban leaders made a lot of money, which amounted to about 400 million.

In addition, the Chinese company MCC has been sending large sums of money to the Taliban in exchange for illegally mined metals. Furthermore, Taliban leaders established a parallel administration to the republican government after 2014, when US troops left cities and districts and moved to their military bases.

In the cities, the republican government took money from the people in the name of taxes, and in the deserts and remote areas, the Taliban fighters took money from the people in the name of Usher and Zakat.

The republican government had set up customs in the cities, and the Taliban had set up customs on highways and commercial routes, added hundreds of thousands of Afghanis a day to the Taliban’s personal budget. Nevertheless, the question is, how did the Taliban leaders spend that money? Because the Taliban fighters did not have a monthly salary, the food and drink arrangements for the Taliban fighters were still funded by private businesspersons. Nor did the Taliban leaders spend the money they received on reconstruction.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) estimated in 2011 that the Taliban had spent between 100 million and 150 million on fighting the Afghan and foreign forces, the rest of the money was spent on training fighters. But according to our intelligence, Taliban fighters were being trained in camps in Waziristan and Baluchistan with funding from Arab countries, However, Taliban leaders also paid by Iran, China and Russia to keep the war going in that time, in order to paved the way for their smugglers to extract precious stones and minerals.

In addition, the Taliban was also making some money through personal targets because the Taliban sold suicide bombers for money and they got money for targeted killings. The Taliban have taken between 10,000 and 20,000 Pakistani rupees per house to kill or destroy the power of them the warlords of the previous republic in remote areas of Afghanistan.

From those local commanders who harmed the common people, from the local commanders who oppressed the common people. From the beginning to the end of the war, all the food and drink needs of the Taliban fighters were met by the civilian population.

For example, Taliban leaders allowed an attack on redacted security base on the orders of the Quetta Shura and took 20,000 to 30,000 Pakistani rupees from each house in redacted district, to free the common people from the tyranny of that ALP commander.

According to intelligence report, the amount reached 3.5 million Pakistani rupees, and the poorest families who could not afford the money joined their youth with the Taliban leaders to prevent a shortage of fighters, to attack the security base of redacted, the police chief of redacted district.

Fighting broke out in late May 2015 at the house of redacted, commander of the ALP or Afghan Local Police, in redacted area of redacted district. August 22, 2015, Mullah redacted and some of his family members were transferred from the district to redacted capital, because of an air operation by US forces.

In earlier 2011, redacted, the local police chief in redacted district was ordered to be attacked by the Taliban’s Quetta Shura following complaints from the public. Redacted was a Hazera who persecuted the Pashtuns and as a result he was severely attacked by the Taliban and for these attacks the Taliban collected up to four millions Pakistani rupees from the general public and almond traders.

The order to attack redacted, the police chief of redacted district in Kandahar province, was issued by the Quetta Shura on July 8, 2020. A commander named redacted, a member of the Popalzai tribe, was accused of torturing and killing civilians.

The Quetta Shura alone received between eight million and nine million Pakistani rupees from the fig and dried fruit traders for the attack, which involved a car bomb on the police chief of redacted district. In addition to the mass killings and sexual assaults, the commander was also accused of extorting money from dried fruit traders.

Order issued by the Quetta Shura on December 23, 2017 for the destruction of the Sangoriyan security unit in Helmand province. The Singurians, a group formed in 2015 at the request of Abdul Jabbar Qahraman in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, were accused of killing civilians, sexually assaulting and extorting money from cars.

To attack the group on January 12, 2018, local Taliban leaders collected money from civilians in Nada Ali, Nawa, and Greshk districts, amounting to up to 3 million Pakistani rupees.

These were just reports of Taliban war in the southwest, based on intelligence, Similarly, Taliban leaders used to take money from private executives and locals to attack powerful commanders and security posts in all insecure areas of Afghanistan, and the same money was spent back on the war.

However, the Taliban sent money from mining, drugs and other means to their private bases and then, with the help of smugglers, transferred it to camps in Waziristan and Baluchistan.

In Afghanistan, the most famous places for their money were Khakriz district of Kandahar province and Tora Bora area of ​​Nangarhar province.

A limited number persons and entities close to the Taliban leaders in Dubai, Kuwait and Qatar to establish numerous private businesses, while spending all of such money.

Since, the amount of money was increasing day by day and the Taliban did not have enough safe areas to store it, because of the possibility of American night raids in Tora Bora and Khakriz district.

The Taliban leaders in the Baluchistan and Waziristan camps could not save much money because a part of their money was transferring to their military bases by the Pakistani government.

These were the reasons why the Taliban leaders spent the money on businesses in Dubai and other commercial countries with the help of private businesspersons, and the profits went to a limited number of Taliban leaders.

Moreover, even now, according to intelligence, many merchants in the I-Group business center in Dubai and the Azizi Groups of UAE-AFG business center are running private businesses at the expense of Taliban’s leaders.

Source: Modern Diplomacy