Afghanistan Boosts Russian Oil Imports, Trade Amid Banking Sanctions

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Akmal Dawi
VOA News
December 21, 2023

The de facto Taliban regime in Afghanistan has increased oil imports from Russia, rising from 246,000 tons in 2022 to more than 710,000 tons in the past 11 months, resulting in the expansion of oil trade to more than $300 million, according to Taliban officials.

The means by which the sanctions-burdened Taliban financial sector facilitates substantial payments from Afghanistan to Russia remains unclear.

International sanctions have limited banking transactions with Afghanistan since the Taliban took control in 2021.

The United States has granted exemptions to sanctions, primarily for humanitarian operations, on the condition that they do not benefit Taliban leaders and entities.

Last year, Taliban officials entered into a provisional agreement with Russia to import 1 million tons of gasoline, 1 million tons of diesel, and 500,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas.

“While the Taliban and Russia are under separate Western sanctions, there is nothing that restricts their ability to trade with each other outside of the U.S. and Western financial systems and jurisdictions,” Kimberly Donovan, director of Economic Statecraft Initiative at the Wilson Center, told VOA.

The U.S. has not imposed sanctions on Russian oil exports, but Washington and its European allies have implemented a price cap on Russian oil sales, aiming to reduce Russia’s revenues for its war in Ukraine.

“The oil price cap is a mechanism to allow Russian crude oil and petroleum products to continue flowing on global markets while reducing the revenue that goes to fund Putin’s war,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Department State told VOA in written comments.

Russia’s oil exports to Afghanistan are deemed insignificant, considering that the country’s net oil revenues surpassed $11 billion only in October.

Regional trade

Under the Taliban, Afghanistan’s economy experienced a 25% contraction as foreign development assistance ceased, and no growth is anticipated this year, according to the World Bank.

Despite international isolation, the Taliban has sustained robust trade relations with several countries in the region. Imports from January to October 2023, totaling more than $6.3 billion, were 25% higher than last year.

While relations between Islamabad and Kabul have recently deteriorated because of refugee expulsions and security concerns, Pakistan has remained Afghanistan’s top trading partner, with Pakistan’s exports to its neighbor exceeding $1.37 billion this year.

In November Afghanistan’s exports were valued at $227 million, with imports standing at $681 million, as reported by a Taliban official to local Tolonews TV.

Food items and coal are noted as Afghanistan’s primary exports to various countries.

“Coal exports reached $252 million in the past 11 months,” Abdul Salaam Jawad, a spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Commerce, said in a short video posted on X.

One Afghan factory, Jawad said, exported 60 tons of raisins to Russia.

Russia’ ambiguity

Moscow and Beijing have both maintained diplomatic and trade relations with Afghanistan, but Russia alone has hosted some anti-Taliban figures advocating for the removal of Taliban regime.

“Russia’s general policy toward the Taliban seems to be ambivalent, keeping all doors open,” Thomas Ruttig, an expert with Afghanistan Analysts Network, wrote to VOA in an email.

“Russia’s relations with the Taliban are not so much about Afghanistan, or the Taliban. It is rather one element in the global competition between the U.S./the West and Russia and China.”

During a meeting on Afghanistan at the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, Russian representative Vasily Nebenzya said the Taliban prevented the collapse of the country in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

However, the Russian diplomat expressed concerns about the risks of terrorism emanating from a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

“It is clear that in order to fully eliminate the terrorists, what is being done by the Taliban is not enough while risks of spillover to Central Asia remain very real,” he said.

While Nebenzya called for humanitarian assistance for the Afghan people, Russia has not contributed to a U.N.-led Afghanistan humanitarian appeal this year, which remains 60% underfunded. In contrast, the United States has contributed more than $370 million to the appeal.

Some information for this article came from Reuters.

Ariana Television to broadcast T20I series against India live and exclusive

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Ariana: After a thrilling 2023 that was packed full of exciting sporting events, Ariana Television Network is thrilled to announce yet another treat that will soon be broadcast to cricket fans around the country. This time it’s Afghanistan’s three-match T20I tour to India that will be screened live and exclusively on Ariana Television. The series will start on January 11 and end on January 17. Last month, the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) confirmed the series and said: “The three T20I matches are scheduled for the 11th, 14th & 17th of January.” Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Rename Airports in Daikundi, Bamyan, and Ghor Provinces

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8am: According to this directive, the name of Abdul Ali Mazari Airport in Bamyan has been changed to “Bamyan Airport,” Abdul Karim Khalili Airport to “Daikundi Airport,” and General Mahiuddin Ghori Airport to “Sultan Ghiyasuddin Ghori Airport.” Renaming places by the Taliban is not a new practice. Previously, this group changed the names of cities, places, roads, schools, and intersections in the capital and some provinces, which were previously named after various personalities. Last year, the Taliban changed the name of the city of Charikar to “Imam Abu Hanifa,” a move that garnered significant reactions. Click here to read more (external link).

UN Calls for More, Direct Engagement With Taliban

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Akmal Dawi
VOA News
December 20, 2023

A top United Nations official has called for more frequent and direct engagements with de facto Taliban authorities both inside and outside Afghanistan to address the country’s challenging relations with the international community.

Addressing members of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, Roza Otunbayeva, the secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan, said engagement does not equate to legitimizing Taliban rule.

“It can be used to express disapproval yet encourage change,” said Otunbayeva, adding that the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has had “successful interactions” with Taliban authorities on several issues, including counternarcotics and human rights.

Otunbayeva’s plea for increased engagement comes just days after a U.N. credentialing committee rejected for a third consecutive year the Taliban’s attempt to secure Afghanistan’s U.N. seat.

Despite having governed Afghanistan for over two years, the Taliban regime remains unrecognized by any country, and several of its key leaders, including the foreign minister, are subject to travel sanctions.

The Taliban’s limitations on women’s education and employment, coupled with their reluctance to establish an inclusive government, are highlighted as key factors contributing to the regime’s isolation.

Otunbayeva also urged Taliban leaders to change their discriminatory policies and adhere to the international treaties and conventions that Afghanistan has signed.

To help Afghanistan return to the international arena, Otunbayeva said, compromises will be required from all sides.

Robert Wood, a U.S. representative to the U.N., urged Security Council members “to work together to press the Taliban to reverse their destructive course.”

“The Taliban must engage in serious dialogue with the Afghan people to support their aspirations, to put an end to human rights abuses, and to allow assistance to reach those in need,” Wood said.

Special envoy

In April, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Turkish diplomat Feridun Sinirlioglu to conduct an independent assessment and recommend how the Security Council should engage with the Taliban.

Among the recommendations Sinirlioglu made in a report submitted last month was the appointment of a special envoy to lead international diplomacy with the Taliban. The Taliban, however, opposed such an appointment.

“The de facto foreign minister explained that the long history of U.N. special envoys in Afghanistan was not positive,” Otunbayeva said.

In 2001, the Taliban were excluded from a U.N.-led intra-Afghan conference in Germany, which laid the groundwork for the post-Taliban Afghan government. An earlier U.N. plan for transitional arrangements in Afghanistan in 1992, led by U.N. special envoy Benon Sevan, did not succeed, leading to factional fighting across much of the country.

Wood voiced support for the appointment of a special envoy for Afghanistan, describing the move as “important for the development of a road map that ensures Afghanistan meets its international obligations.”

Addressing the Security Council meeting on Wednesday, the Chinese representative, Geng Shuang, stressed that the Taliban must shape the current political reality in Afghanistan.

“When engaging with the Afghan authorities, the international community needs to demonstrate good faith, set no preconditions, communicate with the Afghan Taliban in ways easily acceptable to it, and strive for its understanding and cooperation,” Geng said.

China and Russia, two of the five permanent members of the Security Council, have maintained diplomatic and trade relations with the Taliban. Chinese companies have also entered into oil and mineral mining contracts with the de facto government.

US Dismisses as ‘Farce’ Claims of Abandoning Arms in Afghanistan

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Kirby

Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 20, 2023

ISLAMABAD — The United States has again denied leaving any weapons in Afghanistan during the American military’s withdrawal from the country in August 2021, dismissing such allegations as “farce.”

John Kirby, U.S. National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, made the comments Tuesday just days after Pakistan urged the United Nations to investigate how Afghan-based militants are acquiring “sophisticated weapons” to carry out terrorist attacks in the country.

“This is a fallacy, this is a farce. What we did, over the course of our 20 years in Afghanistan, of course, with congressional approval and consultations, was arm and help equip the Afghan national security forces,” Kirby told a White House news conference.

He explained that in the face of advances by the Taliban insurgency during the U.S. troop withdrawal, many Afghan forces had decided not to fight and lay down their arms.

“The ‘arms’ that you’re talking about, and again, I can’t verify these particular reports, belonged to the Afghan national security forces,” Kirby said.

“That’s what was left behind. Not that the United States just walked away and abandoned a bunch of weapons in a pile in Afghanistan. That’s simply not historically accurate.”

Pakistani authorities maintain militants linked to the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, have intensified cross-border attacks from Afghan sanctuaries since the foreign troops withdrew and the Taliban seized power in the neighboring country two years ago.

The TTP and other militant groups have for years carried out bombings and other terrorist raids in Pakistan, but officials say militants are increasingly launching lethal attacks against security forces using U.S.-made modern weaponry.

Usman Jadoon, Pakistan’s deputy permanent representative to the U.N., raised the issue last week during a Security Council open debate on addressing the threat posed by diversion, illicit trafficking, and misuse of small arms and light weapons to peace and security.

Jadoon demanded “an investigation into how the TTP acquired the sophisticated weapons” being used against his country.

Local media quoted him as telling the meeting that “terrorists and criminals do not manufacture these advanced arms; instead, they acquire them from illicit markets or entities with intentions to destabilize specific regions or countries.”

Jadoon did not name the U.S., but Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar told foreign media journalists in September that military equipment left behind during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan had “greatly enhanced the fighting capacity” of TTP and other anti-state groups.

“We are not accusing the U.S. of anything that we would need to share evidence (for),” Kakar said when asked if Pakistan had presented evidence to Washington that its military equipment was now being used against Pakistan.

However, Kakar called for a “coordinated approach” to tackle the challenge of the leftover equipment.

The U.S. military built and trained tens of thousands of Afghan security forces at the cost of more than $80 billion during its two-decade-long presence in the country.

More than $7.1 billion in U.S.-funded military equipment was in the inventory of the former Afghan government when it collapsed in the face of insurgent Taliban nationwide attacks amid the foreign troop exit, the U.S. Defense Department estimated in a report released last year.

Taliban authorities have repeatedly rejected allegations that weapons have fallen into the hands of militants, saying “equipment and vehicles are stored and saved in depots, and no one is allowed to smuggle or sell even a single weapon.

Critics question those claims, saying TTP is a known close ally of the de facto Afghan rulers and fought with them against the U.S.-led international forces for years. The U.S. and the U.N. have listed TTP as a global terrorist organization.

Last July, the Geneva-based independent Small Arms Survey published a report warning that the groups allied with the Afghan Taliban, including TTP, continue to gain access to weapons of U.S.-trained and -equipped former Afghan security forces.

The report noted, citing field research, that “cross-border trafficking is continuing, and that Afghan-sourced arms are both available in Pakistani markets and fueling TTP violence against the Pakistani state.”

Pakistan says nearly 2,500 security forces and civilians have died in militant attacks across the country in the last two years. That toll includes last week’s assault on a military base in a northwestern district that killed 23 soldiers, making it the deadliest attack in Pakistan’s recent history.

Thousands Of Afghans Deported From Pakistani, Iranian Prisons

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By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
December 20, 2023

Thousands of Afghans who were detained in Pakistani and Iranian prisons have been sent back to Afghanistan as Islamabad and Tehran ramp up the expulsion of Afghan citizens.

In Karachi, the capital of the southern Pakistani province of Sindh, the Taliban’s consul-general, Abdul Jabbar Takhari, said that over 3,000 Afghans detained in the region’s prisons had been sent back during the past year.

“Women and children are among the 3,053 Afghans who were sent back,” he told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi on December 19.

“During the past two months, more than 460 Afghans who had been detained despite possessing legal documents were repatriated after they were released,” he added.

Takhari said that 356 Afghans still languished in prisons across Sindh.

Meanwhile, Taliban officials in the southern Nimroz Province said that during the past nine months, Iran has handed over 300 Afghan detainees.

The large number of Afghans detained, mostly on charges of staying illegally in the two countries, indicates the scale of the forced expulsions of Afghans from its eastern and western neighbors.

According to the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, Islamabad currently hosts more than 3 million Afghans, while more than 4.5 million displaced people live in Iran, the vast majority of whom are Afghan.

Taliban and Pakistani officials say that over half a million Afghans have returned to their country from Pakistan during the past three months.

In early October, Islamabad announced that all 1.7 million “undocumented foreigners” should leave the country by November 1.

During the past few months, several hundred thousand Afghans have been forced out of Iran in a similar campaign. Iranian officials say over half of the 5 million Afghans living in the country currently do not possess the documents required to stay in the country.

Most Afghans returning from Iran and Pakistan complain of harassment, abuse, and mistreatment.

“The police took away all our money after detaining us,” Roman Yadgar, who was recently returned to Afghanistan after being freed from prison in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, told Radio Azadi.

“They didn’t give us any food, mistreated our children and women, and treated us inhumanely,” he added. “After a few days, they deported us here.”

Aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if Islamabad and Tehran continue to send millions of Afghans back.

With more than 29 million of the country’s estimated 40 million population in need of humanitarian assistance, Afghanistan is already reeling from the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Earlier this month, Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s special envoy to Afghanistan, said that nearly 450,000 Afghan nationals returned to their home country since Islamabad announced two months ago that it would deport all undocumented foreigners.

Durrani shared the latest data while addressing a seminar in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, VOA reported on December 6. He was speaking the same day the United Nations renewed its warning that Afghans returning from Pakistan “face a precarious, uncertain future” in their crisis-hit and impoverished country.

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Afghanistan’s Kunar River Dam proposal sparks controversy; water management dilemma for Pakistan and Taliban

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Khaama: Several citizens have shared their plans with the Taliban administration regarding the construction of a dam on the Kunar River and have even shown readiness to provide financial assistance for the construction of this dam. The Kunar River has been flowing freely into Pakistan for decades without any intervention. Governments over time have promised to build a dam on this river, but so far no government has been able to harness these waters. Click here to read more (external link).

Return to Cave Dwelling in Bamyan Province: Residents Struggle for Life Without Basic Amenities

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8am: Mohammad Nader, one of the cave dwellers near the Western Buddha (Salsaal), shares his perspective: “During the republic era, the caves around us were nearly empty. Some deserving individuals were provided shelter, and others who could afford to rent homes were evacuated from the caves after identification by a government committee.” He further adds that with the Taliban’s control, a significant number, reaching hundreds of families, have sought refuge in the caves again. All the caves that were previously vacated are now occupied once more. Click here to read more (external link).