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An Afghan man works in a poppy field in Nangarhar province in 2016.
Hard Numbers: Afghans' fewer poppies, Trump's lead in key states, Lake Titicaca’s lower water level, New Delhi's smog, Japan's new frigates, Swifties' tents
95: Once the world’s top opium supplier, Afghanistan has slashed its cultivation of opium poppies by a whopping 95%, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The drop follows a Taliban edict banning opium cultivation.
5: Former President Donald Trump is leading in five of six battleground states in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, according to new polls by The New York Times and Siena College. The numbers indicate that Biden is trailing among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. The president remains ahead in Wisconsin by the smallest of margins: two percentage points.
29: Over the past seven months, Lake Titicaca’s water level at the Peru-Bolivia border has fallen 29 inches to near-record lows. According to scientists, climate change is exacerbating this year’s El Nino phenomenon, layering heat on top of heat in South America’s largest freshwater lake.
471: In more bad environmental news, primary schools in New Delhi have been closed through Nov. 10 due to high pollution levels. On Sunday, the capital recorded an Air Quality Index reading of 471, a level considered hazardous.
12: The Japanese Ministry of Defense will acquire a total of 12 new Mogami class frigates over the next five years. The vessels will be used to defend the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan.
5: Die-hard Taylor Swift fans have been camped out in tents for 5 months for a chance at front-row seats to the singer’s Eras Tour concerts in Buenos Aires on Nov. 9, 10, and 11. Some Bad Blood has been reported between the tent dwellers and locals who say the Swifties should get jobs rather than spend days waiting for their idol – but despite the potentially Delicate situation, fans appear able to Shake it Off.
The Graphic Truth: Opium keeps the Taliban going
The Taliban (officially) banned opium cultivation last April, as they did before 9/11 and the subsequent US invasion that ousted them from power in Afghanistan. But in the 20 years that followed the group became the Pablo Escobars of the global poppy trade by taxing opium farmers. Now the Taliban say growing poppies is again verboten, but this year's harvest is mostly in the bag, and enforcing the ban won't be easy. We look at opium cultivation in Afghanistan since 1996, when the Taliban first ruled the country.
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What We're Watching: Taliban ditch poppies, another Chinese COVID mishap, Darfur war crimes tribunal
Taliban ban poppy cultivation
Fulfilling a long-held promise, the Taliban have banned the cultivation of poppies, the main ingredient used in heroin and other opiates. “If anyone violates the decree, the crop will be destroyed immediately, and the violator will be treated according to Shariah law,” the group said. Afghanistan is by far the largest producer of opium, accounting for 85% of all production globally. (After the Taliban took control last year, opium production increased in the country by 8%.) Indeed, the move comes as the Taliban are vying to gain recognition from the international community as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan and unlock millions of dollars worth of foreign reserves currently held in US banks. However, as cash runs dry from the opium trade, regular Afghan farmers who depend on the crops for their livelihood will feel the economic pain. Observers are warning of an impending calamity in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, which is already reeling from economic collapse with reports of Afghans being forced to sell their children and organs to survive.
Another China COVID controversy
The numbers remain small by US and European standards, but China has faced record high numbers of COVID infections in recent days, and emergency measures to contain an outbreak of a subtype of the omicron variant in Shanghai has persuaded the government to take actions considered drastic even in China. Thousands of healthcare workers from neighboring provinces and about 2,000 military health personnel were dispatched to the city to help perform COVID tests on all of Shanghai’s 26 million people. State officials say that process wrapped up on Monday, but a two-phase lockdown continues as the scale of the outbreak is assessed. In the meantime, the plan has generated controversy, including across Chinese social media: A rule that anyone testing positive must be isolated from those who test negative has reportedly forced the physical separation in some cases of young children, even babies, from their parents.
Darfur war crimes tribunal kicks off
Nearly two decades after the conflict in Darfur broke out, the first war crimes tribunal kicks off this week in the International Criminal Court at the Hague. Ali Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman, former military commander of the Khartoum-backed Janjaweed militia, could spend the rest of his life behind bars if convicted on a range of war crimes, including murder, rape, and torture. Beginning in 2003, mostly non-Arab rebel groups that felt marginalized by the government of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir took up arms against Khartoum. Al-Bashir and his allies responded with a brutal crackdown on Sudan’s Western Darfur region that led to 300,000 deaths and displaced 1.6 million Sudanese. It has since been deemed a genocide by the United States. Al-Bashir, who was ousted in a popular uprising in 2019, is also wanted by the Hague but remains in custody in Khartoum. While this case is boosting hopes for more accountability for war crimes committed across sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades, it comes amid dashed hopes for democracy in Sudan after a joint civilian-military government was overthrown in a coup last October by former allies of al-Bashir.
The Taliban are super rich. Is it enough to run a country?
The Taliban are in control of Afghanistan again. But winning militarily is one thing, governing a country of 40 million people is an entirely different story.
Running a government — even a fundamentalist, tyrannical regime — relies on access to cash and financial assets. That presents a massive problem for the currently-emboldened Taliban, who have been shunned by most global economic heavyweights, and now face potential financial upheaval.
How much money do the Taliban actually have? The US government flushed billions of dollars into the Afghan military, and still, the Taliban managed to swiftly install itself in the presidential palace in Kabul. That's in part because over the past two decades, the Islamic militia has been raking in a lot of dough, allowing the group to streamline its operations and self-fund its insurgency without being beholden to outside players.
Much of this cash comes from illicit activities, like the bountiful opium trade, extortion, and illegal mining. By some estimates, the Taliban made in 2020 alone $464 million from illegally mining iron ore, marble, copper and rare earths from the country's mineral-rich mountains, often strong-arming Afghan mining companies into giving Taliban fighters access and hitting them with hefty levies.
Drug trafficking, however, remains the most lucrative funding source for the Taliban: according to the UN, Afghanistan is responsible for 85 percent of the global opium supply, and the lion's share of the profits flows directly into coffers of the Taliban, whose kingpins control most of the country's poppy fields.
Moreover, in addition to some foreign funding from countries including Pakistan, as well as the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia that have their own strategic interests in Afghanistan, the Taliban reaped around $1.6 billion during the financial year ending March 2020. That's a massive sum for a group whose biggest expenses have been buying weapons, paying fighters' salaries, and training Taliban wannabes.
But the Taliban will soon find out that illegal cash flows, however hefty, can only take you so far. In the immediate term, the Taliban have to find the funds to pay civil servants, as well as to maintain security, and provide basic public services, like keeping hospitals functioning amid the ongoing pandemic.
While this might be manageable in the near term, things could go south soon considering drastic steps taken by the US in recent days to block the Taliban from accessing foreign reserves and the broader international financial system.
Why is the US government squeezing the Taliban, and why does it matter? As recently as last week, the Afghan government held more than $9 billion in foreign reserves, most of which are held in US banks. But as the Taliban descended on Kabul, President Joe Biden froze US-held Afghan assets. The Taliban now only have access to a meager 0.1-0.2 percent of this entire foreign stash. (To date, 80 percent of Afghanistan's budget has come from the US and other donors.)
What's more, under intense pressure from the Biden administration, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that it will no longer deliver around $463 million that was set to be doled out to Kabul as part of a pandemic-relief program for poor countries. Indeed, Washington hopes that this hardline approach will bring the Taliban to its knees.
Still, the corrupt US-backed Afghan government — formerly led by President Ashraf Ghani, who this week reportedly fled Afghanistan with cash-filled duffle bags in tow — had stashed away $362 million on Afghan soil, as well as some gold and other keepsakes that are now in the hands of the Taliban.
Can anyone make up the difference? China has already been making overtures to the Taliban, using economic incentives as its key diplomatic tool. Beijing has linked cash and reconstruction efforts to certain conditions, namely ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a breeding ground for terrorism, threatening Beijing's interests.
Having China on their side would be a significant boon for the internationally-isolated Taliban, which likely hope that Beijing might use its clout at the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to help secure loans.
Russia, which stands accused of propping up the Taliban for years (including offering bounties for the Taliban to kill US soldiers), has also made it clear that it might be willing to deepen relations with the group in exchange for stability in Central Asia.
Unequal pain. It may be a while before the Taliban really feel the economic pinch. As cash runs dry, however, regular Afghans, who benefited from US programs and foreign aid, are likely to suffer much sooner. Indeed, twin financial and economic crises will make it harder for the Taliban to consolidate power, and could cause the group to engage in even more brutal, thug-like governance.
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- The Taliban has only made “cosmetic changes” since the 1990s, says author Ahmed Rashid - GZERO Media ›
- Has the Taliban changed since the 1990’s? - GZERO Media ›