The human rights situation, and of women in particular, is not the only thing that has worsened in the last year and a half in Afghanistan.
Since the Taliban seized power in July 2021 – two decades after being driven out by US troops – the country’s already precarious economy has deteriorated further.
With an annual GDP per capita of US$368, according to World Bank data, Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Half of its more than 42 million inhabitants suffer from serious nutritional problems and 86% go hungry, the highest figure on the planet and 11 points more than a year earlier, according to 2022 data from the World Food Program (WFP) of the UN.
The reduction of external aid, climatic disasters (from earthquakes and floods last years to the recent wave of polar cold) and inflation on a global scale are factors that have exacerbated the crisis.
Added to this is the freezing of some US$9.5 billion in assets of the Afghan central bank abroad due to international sanctions.
In its attempt to keep the country’s finances afloat, the Taliban government is turning to old and new sources of revenue.
“Tax Collection Week”
Since coming to power, the Taliban have increased tax collection.
“The Taliban have achieved extensive military control of the entire territory of Afghanistan, something that no other group had achieved for decades, and this has allowed them to raise more,” Canadian researcher Graeme Smith, former political affairs official at the Taliban, told BBC Mundo. UN in Afghanistan and consultant to the organization International Crisis Group.
The government collected more than $1.5 billion in taxes between December 2021 and October 2022, according to the World Bank, up from the same period in the previous two years.
For this, control of border crossings has been key, where in 2022 59% of total taxes were collected, a figure that in previous years was less than half.
“Customs have become the main source of income for the regime,” Smith says.
Ali Houssaini, an Afghan journalist for the BBC, adds that “now that the Taliban have full control of border crossings and government offices in Afghanistan, they can collect various types of taxes, especially those on imports.”
Due to extreme weather conditions and the low level of development of the agricultural and industrial sectors, among other reasons, Afghanistan is highly dependent on imported products for its domestic supply.
Houssaini also believes that the Taliban “are stricter when it comes to collecting taxes” compared to the country’s previous rulers.
“Before, money ended up more frequently in the pockets of individuals, but now there is less corruption in that regard and a higher percentage ends up in the hands of the government.”
The Taliban even declared a nationwide “tax collection week” to promote this practice.
Ashar and Zhakat
In addition to the conventional the Taliban collect religious taxes.
They are called Ashar and Zhakat, with which the extremists were already financing themselves in the territories they were taking before regaining power in 2021.
The BBC journalist explains what they consist of: “Every year you have to calculate your wealth and give a fifth to the government.”
“We don’t have the exact number or the scale, but it is estimated to be a high number, because 99% of Afghans are Muslims and they have to obey what they are ordered as an Islamic act.”
Smith, for his part, agrees that it is difficult to put into figures the magnitude of this income or its contribution to state coffers.
“The Taliban have not been transparent with their finances, so we don’t know.”
Mining
Afghanistan is a country rich in natural resources, from coal, oil, and natural gas to gold, copper, rare earths, and precious stones.
The value of these resources is approximately $1 trillion, according to the estimate of geologists and experts from the US Department of Defense.
Its extraction, however, requires a high investment in machinery, transport and logistics that, due to the political instability in the country, has not occurred.
“Most of that riches will probably stay underground for the foreseeable future,” says Smith.
“If you want to get gold and copper ore out of Afghanistan you need to build a railway, that’s a very large investment and investors are being very cautious about making such an outlay at the moment,” he says.
At the moment the main export product is charcoalwhich Afghanistan sends mostly to Pakistan.
Afghan coal sales to its neighbor increased by about 20% in the first year under Taliban rule to 10,000 tons a day, according to government data.
This contributed to the 90% year-on-year rise in Afghanistan’s total exports in 2022, which reached $1.7 billion, according to a recent World Bank report.
Pakistan, with 65%, is the main destination for Afghan mining, textile and agricultural products, followed by India with 20%.
Over the two decades to 2021, 126 small mines were opened in Afghanistan and, according to the Taliban’s Ministry of Mines and Oil, another 60 have been added in the last year alone and there are several more contracts to be signed, says Ali Houssaini.
The journalist explains that several Chinese companies are negotiating in Kabul with the Taliban government to sign contracts, “especially in copper mining.”
And also in oil: the Afghan government announced this month that it will sign with the Chinese company CAPEIC the largest oil extraction contract with a foreign company since the Taliban took power a year and a half ago.
Drug trafficking?
Before coming to power, the Taliban derived much of their income from criminal activities such as extortion, kidnapping and, above all, the cultivation and sale of opium.
Afghanistan came to account for more than 80% of the world’s production of illicit opium, according to UN data.
In April 2022, the Taliban banned opium poppy cultivation in the country.
This poppy, which is used to produce heroin and other highly addictive substances, has been a fertile source of income for decades for corrupt rulers and officials, as well as for farmers, local chieftains and warlords in the country.
The Taliban, before taking power, also financed itself in part through opium sales. Have they stopped doing it?
In July the US government released a report indicating that Afghan rulers “appear committed to their drug ban” even though they risk losing the support of farmers and others involved in the drug trade.
Houssaini believes that, although to a lesser extent and being impossible to count, the Taliban government continues to receive money from drug trafficking.
“Although the Taliban leadership has banned the cultivation and sale of drugs in Afghanistan, they continue to be cultivated and trafficked,” he says.
In fact, eight months after the announcement of the ban on the cultivation of narcotics, 233,000 hectares of opium cultivation were detected, according to the latest report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
And part of the money collected, the journalist maintains, ends up in the public coffers unlike previous administrations, in which almost everything went directly into the pockets of corrupt officials.
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss out on our best content.
BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-64435319, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-02-02 05:00:09
#Afghanistan #Taliban #financed #power