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The Taliban Is Tapped-Out
Afghanistan’s insurgents have endured hard times before, but nothing quite like this. At first glance the war might seem to be turning in their favor. Hundreds of Taliban foot soldiers - the heart and soul of the armed struggle against the U.S.-backed Kabul government - are running out of food, money and ammunition. As Vocative reports, their plight is unlikely to improve anytime soon - people familiar with the Taliban’s finances say the organization’s main sources of revenue have dried up. Wealthy Arab donors, Afghan businessmen and even Pakistan’s powerful and secretive spy agency have all reduced or stopped funding, each for their own reasons.
Mullah Yaseen is penniless. Wrapped in a heavy black coat, the 45-year-old Afghan insurgent huddles inside a heatless tea shop near the Pakistani-Afghan border and pours out his troubles. Over the past eight months, he and his 15 Taliban fighters have received no support from the group’s central command, Yaseen says. Not a bullet or a cent.
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Yaseen needed to requisition supplies and ammunition for the fighting season ahead.
He had no luck. Instead, he was told that there were temporary cash-flow problems and he should ask his fellow villagers for a loan. He would be given the money to reimburse them within a month, he was promised. Back home, Yaseen scraped up roughly $2,000 to keep his men fighting. He has yet to be repaid, and his neighbors want the money.
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Nevertheless, Mullah Yaseen and hundreds of Taliban foot soldiers like him—the heart and soul of the armed struggle against the U.S.-backed Kabul government—are running out of food, money and ammunition.
Their plight is unlikely to improve anytime soon. People familiar with the Taliban’s finances say the organization’s main sources of revenue have dried up. Wealthy Arab donors, Afghan businessmen and even Pakistan’s powerful and secretive spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, have all reduced or stopped funding, each for their own reasons.
The Arabs’ departure is a crippling blow. Support from private Saudi donors has been crucial to Afghanistan’s insurgents ever since the war against the Soviets in the 1980s—many years before the rise of Mullah Mohammed Omar and his armed followers. But interest in Afghanistan has faded among hard-liners in the Gulf region. Osama bin Laden is dead; most of Al Qaeda’s surviving operatives have fled the constant threat of U.S. drone attacks, and the Taliban never really shared bin Laden’s desire to take his holy war worldwide. Now global jihad and its Arab backers have moved on to more promising arenas, like Iraq and Syria.
As the financial crisis continues, Afghan civilians say they aren’t merely disappointed with the Taliban—they’re fed up.
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Many former contributors no longer trust the insurgents. “We don’t regard the Taliban as soldiers of God anymore,” says a conservative Afghan businessman in Peshawar.
“Their fundraisers used to come on foot to collect donations. Now they show up in luxury cars. It’s clear they’re stealing the money.” A 40-year-old former Taliban commander echoes the complaint: “Instead of going to jihad, the donations are cruising down the streets of Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi.”
The group isn’t totally destitute...
According to an official with the Afghan National Security Council, the ISI continues to channel support to those insurgent leaders who reliably do Pakistan’s bidding. But everyone else is on his own, and there are few viable alternatives. Local Taliban units used to drive a lucrative trade in ransom kidnapping, but they finally ran out of potential victims. Although the group still imposes “taxes” on the country’s multibillion-dollar heroin industry, much of that money seems to end up filling private bank accounts, rather than helping fighters in the field.
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The Taliban’s finance department has a special office dedicated to resolving complaints, but it was no help. “They told me, ‘Sorry, we don’t have that much money right now.’”
Death is fine - but dying with a debt!! not acceptable...
He says he has left the front lines. As much as he wants to rejoin the jihad, he doesn’t dare go back until he repays the $2,000 he owes his neighbors. He’s not afraid to die, he says. What scares him is the idea that he might die with an outstanding loan. “Anytime I’m out there, I could be martyred,” he says. “And God does not forgive anyone—even a martyr—who dies without paying his just debts.”
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I see the taliban talkin' it george w. in texas and ol' Ronney in the whitehouse every time I watch the clips on yoootooobs.
I find it interesting that the, spent the enemy into defeat, cold war theme is being brought up right before the deficit debate returns.
If you wanna win gotta keep buying drones, trucks, boats and missiles.
Did I sleep in late or something? Didn't we fund and train them? Didn't Zibrinski tell them god was on their side and pack their napsacks with rpg's and a pat on the ass?
Wtf did I miss?
Yes, Yes, and Yes,
So why does GS have ZH post this dribble?
They should have opened a bank in the USA first, bought a boatload of MBS, pay a few campaign contributions, and qualify for TARP. Would've made them billions.
I call racism. We gave bailouts to financial terrorists but not Islamic terrorists.
so let me see if I got this right....the US is bored with Afghanistan, is moving on to greener bomb craters, and at the same time the funding for the terra ists is suddenly drying up. So, now that the US military is shifting its focus to other locations, is the terra ists funding increasing over there now?
Let's chip in and send them some pork sausage.
send em some barbequed
walrus flippers too...
I don't know if the Taliban is tapped out but I do know that humanity is tapped out. It's had enough. In fact it's had too much of this rot, day after day, year after year.
Time to have a few laughs and play with our kids and grandkids.
Seriously, humanity has been blessed with a great deal and regardless of what the source of those blessings is, it's time to act like grateful recipients rather than crazed maniacs.
Left high and dry. Nice strategy to flush them out.
Like WMD Buffet says: "After all, you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out."
Did the CIA write this horseshit?
One of the fundaments of the Brzezinski Asian 'put', as follow up to Dear Henry's global strategy and power play, initiated Afghan trap strategy in 1979; after fall of Iran to Ayatollah Khomeini.
It started the Taliban ideological ramp up in neighboring Pakistan via the Madrassa school system, all based on Saud funded money --Oil was at 36 $/bbl--to fight the concomitant push of Pinko Afghan aristocracy calling in Soviet "friends" to help neutralise the threat of rabid Shia Islam spilling over from its western frontiers : (the Gulbuddin Hekmatyar clan), as well the resistance of Tajik elements of the Northern alliance (The Masud clan).
The Afghan "honey trap" was set in earnest by the CIA, when Saddam with the same Saud/CIA backing started the Iran -Iraq war in 1980. Now the great game was really on. SOviet Russia's incursion, caught as ally to "secular" pinko Afghan regime, was being harassed from the west by Shia rabid Islam and on the east by the Taliban concoction, co-financed by ZIA/ISI army regime-- all fed and nourished by the US arms obsolescence Military aid racket since 1958 (legacy of the Dulles Bros. global US strategy post Bandung 1955 Conference, third world neutral axis perceived as threat to USA's Cold War ramp up) -- and new CIA money poured in by Congress (Charlie Wilson's war).
And the West created the Frankenstein monster of Al Qaeda- Taliban with Saud and poppy money in the 1980-1990s.
Thirty years down the road that strategy has come to total state of convolution and friends of yesteryear are now deadly foes since 9/11. And the money train is now running out as Debt strangulation is the global financial disease of this new post Lehman age.
Consequences. I wonder what Brzezinski and Prince EL Turki/Bandar Sultan, the prime initiators of the Saud- Carter days handshake, which blossomed under GWB and NWO into Frankensteinistan, think about the overall results of their mad strategy today....
History will have to settle its accounts with them one day !
Have their relatives in the US take out "student loans" and then send the money to the Taliban...problem solved....
I call BS. Neither Bush nor Obama screwed with the poppy trade.
Just say No, my ass.