AQ Booming Under Taliban 2.0
Michael Hughes
March 23, 2024
The U.S. exit from Afghanistan was partially based on rolling the dice that the reconstitution of al-Qaeda under the Taliban would be a problem for the neighbors in Central and South Asia, not the Western powers. This was also based on the supposition that should al-Qaeda begin to plot another 9-11-style attack, U.S. counterterrorism organizations would not be asleep at the switch. The U.S. has more antiterror capabilities today, so goes this argument, hence the al-Qaeda threat is not seen as imminent. Al-Qaeda, for its part, may not have its eyes on the American homeland, yet, but it is certainly getting stronger by the day, including by securing millions worth of straight profit from mining proceeds and stealing aid funds.
Western diplomats and U.N. officials in recent days have reportedly been passing around an unpublished document that reveals how deeply embedded AQ is in Taliban operations and how they are profiting from Afghanistan’s natural resources and stealing international aid. An unnamed London-based firm provided a copy to Foreign Policy, the magazine said on Friday. The research, conducted inside Afghanistan in recent months, includes names of al-Qaeda operatives and their roles in the Taliban administration.
Al-Qaeda is “raking in tens of millions of dollars” a week from gold mines in Afghanistan’s northern Badakhshan and Takhar provinces, protected by Taliban-friendly warlords, Foreign Policy’s Lynne O’Donnell said, citing the document, adding that 11 gold mines are geolocated in the report.
AQ’s portion represents a 25% share of funds derived from the gold and gem mines. The Taliban’s monthly off-the-books take from the gold mines exceeds $25 million. Since the mines began operating in early 2022, AQ’s share has totaled roughly $194 million. The money is shared with al-Qaeda by Haqqani’s Kabul group and Akhundzada’s in Kandahar, strange bedfellows given allegations of a power struggle between the two factions.
“Now that they can operate with impunity…. The Taliban are once again providing al-Qaeda commanders and operatives with everything they need, from weapons to wives, housing, passports, and access to the vast smuggling network built up over decades to facilitate the heroin empire that bankrolled the Taliban’s war,” O’Donnell wrote. “The routes have been repurposed for lower-cost, higher-return methamphetamine, weapons, cash, gold, and other contraband.”
Moreover, militants from Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and elsewhere have been circulating through al-Qaeda training camps, revived since the Taliban takeover, while security is provided by the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence.
The London firm report identified 14 al-Qaeda affiliates benefiting from diverted mining funds. Seven based in Afghanistan include the anti-Chinese East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Jamaat Ansarullah, and TTP. The list of benefactors also includes AQ affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, the Maghreb, the Indian subcontinent, and al-Shabab.
“The report includes a list of al-Qaeda commanders, some of whom were bin Laden’s lieutenants when he was living in Afghanistan while planning the attacks on the United States,” O’Donnell added.
The latest report comes after ProPublica revealed the UN flew some $2.9 Billion in cash to Afghanistan since the fall of Kabul, a significant portion of which comes from U.S. taxpayer coffers, and into the hands of the Taliban. The State Department has repeatedly and adamantly denied that any U.S. aid has been diverted by the Taliban. And does anybody doubt AQ is benefitting from that cash stream as well?
The timing of the report is especially nauseating coming the same day that an NGO, citing the World Bank, said that 50% of Afghans live in poverty, according to Tolo News. Although the same could be said for previous years (in 2016 the World Bank said 54% were under the poverty line).
Sadly, this is not anything new or shocking. The U.S. financed both sides of the war in Afghanistan since 2001, as a mind-boggling percentage of foreign aid flooded Taliban coffers on a daily basis, according to Douglas Wissing in his book, Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban.
However, in this case the Taliban are not diverting funds to support an insurgency against an occupier. They are starving fellow Afghans to benefit international terrorist groups. Is the reality that the Taliban have basically turned Afghanistan into a terror-mafia complex? It is probably more complicated than that, I reckon. If anything, this generation of Taliban are even more willing to support global jihad than they were under Mullah Omar.
The report makes a laughingstock out of the Doha agreement, but I have yet to meet anyone that really believed the Taliban would ever live up to commitments to disengage from al-Qaeda. Hans-Jakob Schindler, the senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, summed it up aptly for O’Donnell, throwing a wet blanket on Taliban claims to be an indigenous movement focused on national interests.
“It is clear that the Taliban have never changed their stance toward international terrorism and, in particular, al-Qaeda,” Schindler said.