Taliban fighters (file photo)
Ariana: Ministry of Defense (MoD) Inspector General Latifullah Hakimi says the Islamic Emirate’s army now totals 170,000 personnel. Speaking at an event on Sunday in Herat, attended by a group of university professors, writers, poets and others, Hakimi said that all these forces are equipped with military uniforms and efforts are being made to improve security even further. Click here to read more (external link).
Ariana: The dazzling opening ceremony was held on Saturday. Athletes from 45 Asian countries are taking part. According to the directorate 84 athletes plus representatives of the Afghanistan National Olympic Committee were also at the ceremony. The general directorate of physical education and sport said Afghan athletes will be competing in 15 different sports. Click here to read more (external link).
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8am: Following the recent killing of two Hazara individuals in the Khas Uruzgan district of Uruzgan province, the National Resistance Council for the Salvation of Afghanistan has asserted that, in the past two years, the Taliban have been responsible for the deaths of 17 Hazara residents. The National Resistance Council for the Salvation of Afghanistan issued a statement on Saturday night, September 23, denouncing this act by the Taliban as a “systematic massacre” of Shia and Hazara people. Click here to read more (external link).
Michael Hughes: The caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, in his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York City said Islamabad aims to take action against terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan, while in the same address accused India of “state terrorism.”
The remarks come amid heightened tensions between the Taliban government and Islamabad with the latter accusing Kabul of hosting and supporting terrorist elements including the Islamic State and Pakistani Taliban.
By Abubakar Siddique
September 23, 2023
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Taliban has been celebrating since the Islamist group that rules Afghanistan signed seven mining contracts promising to attract more than $6.5 billion in investments late last month.
But experts are skeptical about whether the contracts, signed on August 31 with Afghan-based companies aligned with foreign partners from China, Iran, Turkey, and Britain, can be implemented.
They question whether large-scale mining investments are even possible as the Taliban’s cash-strapped government remains unrecognized because of its extensive human rights abuses and its banning of women from schools, work and public life.
Illegitimacy
The Taliban’s lack of legitimacy also hangs over whether its accelerated efforts to boost mining revenue can deliver as a dire humanitarian crisis deepens in Afghanistan. Experts say few Afghans can benefit from opaque deals that circumvent established international standards.
“Large-scale development of Afghanistan’s mineral resources would take more capital than large firms are willing to commit in the absence of diplomatic recognition,” says Jeff Rigsby, a former U.S. military contractor and aid worker who lives in Kabul.
While looking for business opportunities in Afghanistan since 2022, Rigsby has closely followed the Taliban’s effort to exploit the country’s mineral resources.
“The Taliban has not always done due diligence in the past when [it’s] announced investment deals in other sectors,” he said. Rigsby added that little is known about the foreign firms signing the recent contracts to extract copper, gold, lead, zinc, and iron from several Afghan provinces.
“There is no transparency regarding these contracts,” noted Abdul Qadeer Mutfi, a former adviser to the Afghan Mining and Petroleum Ministry. “The Taliban wants to end the government’s financial problems by selling the minerals as raw materials to various countries.”
Mutfi said that Taliban mining contracts do not follow standard practices, which will deprive Kabul of international arbitration since the Taliban government is not recognized.
“Afghanistan might follow many African countries in experiencing a resource curse,” he said, alluding to the experience of several African nations in which large-scale exploitation of natural resources has not translated into growth and prosperity.
“After drugs, minerals are a significant source of funding conflict,” he said.
The Taliban, however, claims to be striving for self-sufficiency by developing the country’s natural resources. Its leaders have repeatedly projected mining, irrigation, and trade projects as a way out of the current economic and humanitarian crisis.
According to the UN, more than 30 million Afghans out of a total estimated population of 40 million need humanitarian assistance. With international funding declining, the world body has warned that millions of Afghans will not have enough food and that as many as 3 million face starvation.
Abundant Minerals
But Rigsby sees little Taliban success in developing new mines by pointing out that the extremist group has been exporting coal to Pakistan from existing mines and has revived an oil exploration deal with Chinese firms that the former pro-Western government in Kabul first concluded more than a decade ago.
In January, the Taliban government signed a contract with the Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (CAPEIC) to invest $540 million until 2026 to explore oil and gas in Afghanistan’s northern Amu River basin. This revived a 2012 contract with the state-owned company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).
Surveys estimating Afghanistan’s potential mineral resources to be worth more than $1 trillion generated a lot of headlines in 2010. But the accuracy of this estimate has recently been questioned. The country’s poor infrastructure, absence of advanced technology, a trained workforce, and the high cost of extraction remain significant obstacles.
Nevertheless, the country has vast deposits of iron, copper, coal, lithium, marble, chromite, cobalt, and gold. And, in addition to gas and petroleum, the mountainous country has large reservoirs of lapis lazuli and other gemstones.
Since returning to power two years ago, the cash-strapped Taliban has attempted to turn Afghanistan’s natural resources into a cash cow.
“From these investments you can imagine how many minerals we have and how they can boost our revenues,” said Shahbuddin Delawar, the Taliban’s mining and petroleum minister, after signing the deals on August 31.
He said in an interview that the Taliban government has so far concluded 116 small and 27 large mining contracts. He said during the last fiscal year, which ended in March, the government earned more than $220 million in mining revenue.
“The sale of minerals has increased because of transparency and an end to smuggling,” he told the BBC.
China
His upbeat assessment, however, is not backed by the evolving extractive industry on the ground. The Chinese state and private firms — who are one of the major international investors in Afghan mining — appear reluctant to begin working.
The China Metallurgical Group Corporation has yet to start a $2.83 billion contract for copper mining in the eastern Logar Province. The 30-year lease contract was signed in 2007. Taliban attempts to push the Chinese to begin underground mining to protect the vast Buddhist archaeological sites in the region have been unsuccessful.
“The Chinese presence here in the mining sector seems minimal, although some Chinese traders are exporting or smuggling minerals in small quantities,” noted Rigsby.
In a recent report, the research group Afghanistan Analyst Network concluded that the larger Chinese projects will take years to materialize.
“They will generate little immediate income for the ailing Afghan economy,” the report said.
Mutfi argues that in the absence of accountability, supervision, community engagement, and independent political and civil-society oversight, only Taliban leaders will benefit from exploiting Afghanistan’s natural resources.
“We are facing a significant loss,” he said.
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Muttaqi
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
September 22, 2023
ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s Taliban have pledged “concrete steps” to “neutralize” activities of militants plotting terrorist attacks against neighboring Pakistan, diplomatic sources told VOA on Friday.
The assurance was given in a bilateral meeting Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi hosted Thursday with a high-level Pakistani delegation in Kabul, the sources privy to the talks said.
Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s special representative on Afghanistan, led the delegation including senior military officials, among others. The visit came amid an upsurge in deadly attacks against security forces in Pakistan.
The banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, has claimed responsibility for much of the violence. Islamabad maintains TTP leaders and fighters sheltering in Afghanistan have intensified cross-border attacks since the Taliban reclaimed power in Kabul two years ago.
Hundreds of Pakistani police and soldiers have died in almost daily TTP attacks in the last year.
The sources told VOA that “the emphasis” of Thursday’s talks was on the TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban. “The Afghan side was told that the TTP’s use of Afghan territory against Pakistan has been a serious concern” for Islamabad.
The Kabul authorities “assured concrete steps to neutralize TTP activities,” the sources added, without elaborating.
The meeting also decided to hold “regular consultations” to review the security situation along the nearly 2,600-kilometer border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
While Pakistani officials have not released any details of the talks, Muttaqi’s office quoted him as stressing the need for both countries to refrain from making public statements that fuel mutual mistrust.
“No one will be allowed to spoil the relations between the two countries,” the Taliban chief diplomat said. The statement on X, formerly Twitter, did not mention the TTP, nor did it refer to Kabul’s alleged pledge about curbing the group’s activities.
The Taliban deny allegations they are allowing anyone to use Afghan soil to threaten other countries.
Pakistani officials have previously claimed they shared with Taliban authorities “video evidence” and bodies of suspected Afghan Taliban fighters who joined TTP militants in recent high-profile “terrorist” attacks and were killed by security forces.
The United States has designated the TTP a global terrorist organization.
The group’s leadership has publicly pledged allegiance to Hibatullah Akhundzada, the reclusive supreme leader of the Afghan Taliban. The TTP emerged in Pakistani border areas in 2007 and fought alongside the Taliban against U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan.
“The group posing the greatest threat to the region’s stability is the TTP. We have seen a very significant increase in attacks directed at Pakistan,” Tom West, the U.S. special representative on Afghanistan, told a seminar in Washington last week.
“They [the TTP] became allies of the Taliban during the war. They were financial supporters, logistical supporters, and operational allies as well. I think the ties between them are quite tight,” West said.
All American and NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, just days after the then-Taliban insurgents took control of the country, ending nearly 20 years of U.S. involvement in the Afghan war.
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AP: The Biden administration said on September 21 that it was giving temporary legal status to Afghan migrants who have already been living in the country for a little over a year. The Department of Homeland Security said in the announcement that the decision to give Temporary Protected Status to Afghans who arrived after March 15, 2022, and before Sept. 20, 2023, would affect roughly 14,600 Afghans. This status doesn’t give affected Afghans a long-term right to stay in the country or a path to citizenship. It’s good until 2025, when it would have to be renewed again. Click here to read more (external link).