Taliban facing financial crisis

AFGHANISTAN - The Afghan Taliban are facing a cash crisis with donors unwilling to bankroll an insurgency whose victims are increasingly civilians rather than foreign troops, according to several members of the movement.

Mullah Rahmatullah Kakazada, a senior diplomat under the Taliban regime, told that the Taliban was in an increasingly precarious financial position despite chalking up several dramatic battlefield successes in the last year. “The war is becoming unpopular because of all the bad publicity on civilian casualties,” he said. “These people who give money don’t want to spend it on mines that kill children.” The Taliban have long collected donations from sympathisers around the region, including wealthy Afghan and Arab businessmen in the Gulf. But now the movement’s finances are so weakened that some of its most seriously injured fighters are no longer welcome at Pakistan’s private hospitals because they cannot settle their bills, according to Taliban sources. Kakazada said the departure of most foreign combat troops since 2014, and the outbreak of bloody infighting between rival Taliban groups, had weakened the legitimacy of a war the Taliban still portray as a struggle against “foreign occupation”.

(Theguardian.com)