Foreign donors provided 75 percent of the government spending to Afghanistan. With that income gone, the Taliban will survive with an uncounted income worth millions of dollars
When the Taliban captured Afghanistan following the swift withdrawal of American forces on August 16 after 20 years of fighting a guerilla war against the world's superpower, many wondered how the armed group would run the country's economy. For the Taliban, it will take strenuous efforts to keep the aid coming in as the Afghan government did once, even though it's projecting a more moderate stance in an attempt to gain legitimacy. But donor states are hesitant.
“Humanitarian and development projects might not be so persuasive to the Taliban, because there are plenty of hidden sources of cash circulating, although these might not be applied to similar development or humanitarian purposes," the Overseas Development Institute report said. “The $5.1 million in revenues collected by the Taliban from the production and trade in illegal drugs was found to be only a fraction of the $40.9 million income earned from taxing transit goods and fuel,” the ODI report said.
In this April 25, 2009 file photo, Afghan farmers work in opium poppy fields in Nawa district of Helmand province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan. The Taliban's money is coming mostly from extortion, crime and drugs. Sen Chris Murphy, a congressional delegation in 2011 recounted what he had witnessed when he visited Herat province in 2011, as heIt struck Murphy that Afghan farmers would sell poppies — the plant from which opium is extracted to make heroin — and the Taliban, which used to steal the crops before the US invasion, would buy the product under the watchful eye of the US.
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