Illegal Mining Main Revenue Source for Militants in Afghanistan

The Ministry of Mines and Petroleum (MoMP) says most of the Afghan provinces that have underground mines have been unsecured by the insurgents and become the main source of revenue for them.

 MoMP officials declare that the armed insurgents illegally extract mines in key provinces such as; Helmand, Badakhshan, Nangarhar, Ghazni and Logar.

“We have problems in Helmand, Nangarhar, Ghazni, Badakhshan and other provinces in terms of the illegal extraction of mines. But we have our measures and shared all information with the security organs,” said Abdul Qadir Motfi, the spokesman of MoMP.

Recently, the Taliban group has reportedly fueled its revenue from Rokham stone in Deshew district of Helmand province.

“It has been two to three months that tons of stones have been extracted from the Deshew district which is under the Taliban. It is clear that the government has no control in those areas,” said Karim Atal, a Helmand Provincial Council member.

But what are the government’s measures about illegal mining of the armed oppositions and powerful?

“Those mines that are under our control extract in legal process, but this war is imposed on Afghanistan. There are active regional intelligences that are against the government and smuggle the mines,” said Dawlat Waziri, the spokesman of the Defense Ministry.

Afghanistan has some of the richest mineral deposits in the world, but extracting them has proven difficult amid years of instability and war.

There were modest signs of improvement in 2017, most notably the Afghan government’s ability to manage and report its earnings from mining royalties and taxes, which it couldn’t do much at all a few years ago.

But challenges remain to attract more meaningful foreign investment and capitalize on the country’s resources.

The government in Kabul has long viewed the natural resources contained beneath Afghanistan’s mountains and deserts, estimated to be worth as much as $1 trillion to $3 trillion, as a potential economic panacea.

But an array of problems beyond the country’s war corruption, inadequate infrastructure, legal uncertainty, illegal mining and wavering investors has diminished hopes for Afghanistan’s mining potential.