Taliban runs ‘mafia-style’ enterprises
KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban Islamist movement is increasingly financed by criminal enterprises including heroin laboratories, illegal ruby and emerald mines and kidnapping, making a negotiated peace deal harder, according to a report for the UN Security Council.
The report said there was a new “scale and depth” to the Taliban’s integration with criminal networks, which includes directly running marble mines, taxing the production and export of narcotics and kidnapping for ransom.
Diverse financing, including foreign donations, helped the Taliban survive 13 years of US-led war in Afghanistan, analysts say.
“They are increasingly acting more like ‘godfathers’ than a ‘government in waiting’,” a panel of experts who advise the Security Council on sanctions said in the report made public late on Tuesday.
In 2014 the Taliban inflicted heavy casualties on Afghan security forces as foreign allies withdrew most of their troops. More civilians were killed in 2014 than in any other year of the war, according to the United Nations.
US president Barack Obama is now considering a request from Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani to slow the pace of the withdrawal of US troops, a senior administration official said on Wednesday. Mr Ghani is also trying to open up channels for peace talks with the Taliban.
The UN report called for sanctions to disrupt the Taliban’s alleged criminal activity, warning that fighters running lucrative illicit businesses would be less interested in seeking peace.
“Taliban members involved in criminal activities will not benefit politically or economically from a potential reconciliation between the government of Afghanistan and the top leadership of the Taliban movement,” it said.
The activities described in the report — citing Afghan officials and businessmen affected by Taliban extortion — include charging to smuggle emeralds out of the country, taxing lapis lazuli production and aiding illegal ruby mining in areas under the Taliban’s sway near Kabul.