Weaponising Afghan Mines & Minerals

Power in Afghanistan today is not measured by public consent or institutional authority, but by control over revenue streams that operate beyond law and scrutiny. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Taliban’s takeover of the mining sector, where gold and other strategic minerals have become instruments of domination rather than tools of recovery. Behind official claims of security and economic stabilization lies a system of extraction rooted in force, exclusion, and secrecy.

Events in Badakhshan and Takhar expose how mining has been transformed into a mechanism for power consolidation, coercive control, and financial insulation, revealing a governing model that prioritizes regime survival over national welfare.

Violence and dispossession in Badakhshan and Takhar

The unrest that erupted in Takhar’s Chah Ab district and Badakhshan’s Avizhai Pan Mur followed the Taliban-backed seizure of local gold mines that had sustained surrounding communities for generations. Residents who resisted dispossession took to the streets, only to face armed retaliation. Taliban security forces, reinforced by irregular armed networks linked to Bashir Haji Noorzi, opened fire on civilians, resulting in deaths, injuries, and destruction of homes and property.

Noorzi, a former drug trafficker freed in a 2022 prisoner exchange, has since assumed a central role in Taliban mining operations, applying his expertise in illicit trade and logistics to organize extraction and transport. The message was unambiguous: resource control would be enforced through violence rather than negotiation. Mining sites became militarized zones, and economic activity was stripped of any civilian or communal character.

Systematic resource capture and parallel economy

This violence is not incidental but structural. The Taliban’s mining strategy is based on systematic resource capture. Local operators are expelled, community permits revoked, and control is handed to loyalists through opaque arrangements that bypass all institutional oversight. Gold mining in northern Afghanistan alone generates tens of millions of dollars every month, with a substantial portion diverted directly into Taliban command structures outside formal budgets.

This parallel economy operates beyond accountability, with no reinvestment in affected communities and no transparency in revenue flows. As extraction expands, environmental damage intensifies, social cohesion fractures, and governance erodes. Communities shoulder the costs through land loss, polluted water, and repression, while benefits accumulate within a narrow circle of armed elites. Mining, instead of fostering growth, has become a catalyst for instability and grievance.

Mining revenues and the war economy

The most dangerous consequence of this system lies in how mining revenues are deployed. Gold has become the financial backbone of the Taliban’s war economy, directly sustaining militant networks with regional reach. Badakhshan’s gold alone is estimated to generate up to 500 million dollars annually, funding weapons, salaries, enforcement units, and operational support for al-Qaeda. Taliban-controlled mining income has also strengthened Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, reinforcing cross-border terrorism and deepening Pakistan’s security challenges.

Contracts signed after 2021 ignore environmental review, competitive bidding, and independent monitoring, allowing non-state actors to exploit resource flows unchecked. Gold-bearing belts often overlap with uranium and other strategic minerals, increasing their value for smuggling and covert financing. Unregulated extraction has thus evolved into a long-term funding stream for terrorism, transforming natural resources into instruments of regional destabilization. Allegations of indirect external facilitation, including Indian strategic interest in sustaining pressure on regional rivals through prolonged instability, further complicate an already volatile landscape.

Human and environmental consequences

The human and environmental consequences are equally severe. Mining operations rely on mercury and cyanide without safeguards, contaminating rivers such as Kokcha and Shiwa. Drinking water, farmland, livestock, and fisheries have been poisoned, triggering neurological disorders, kidney disease, birth complications, and food-chain contamination. Heavy metals, including lead and uranium, now threaten thousands of households. Worker safety is virtually nonexistent. Tunnel collapses and landslides routinely kill laborers working without protective equipment, insurance, or compensation.

Despite Taliban claims of extensive security deployments and revenue collection, forces are primarily tasked with guarding mining sites and suppressing protests rather than addressing grievances over land rights, health hazards, and employment. Demonstrations in Badakhshan and Takhar reflect a widening legitimacy crisis, with community elders openly questioning the regime’s right to exploit national resources without legal mandate or consent. Continued international isolation and frozen reserves underscore global reluctance to engage with a system that finances terrorism, suppresses communities, and substitutes coercion for governance.

Resource wealth as a tool of repression

Afghanistan’s experience under Taliban mining control illustrates how resource wealth can be weaponized in fragile states. Without transparency, rule of law, and reinvestment, minerals do not bring recovery; they entrench repression. Today, mining stands at the center of the Taliban’s survival strategy, sustaining internal control, empowering al-Qaeda and TTP, and exporting instability across borders. Natural wealth that could have rebuilt Afghanistan now fuels violence, turning extraction into a central mechanism of fear, fragmentation, and regional insecurity.