Asian Window

Gretchen Peters, author of the forthcoming “Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda,” at Foreign Policy:

In the last eight years, the Afghan Taliban have greatly expanded their illicit activities, morphing into a force more violent and ruthless than when they were in power from 1996 to 2001 and building up an economic empire worth almost half a billion dollars. Their activities are diverse: In some parts of the south, they collaborate with drug traffickers to dictate poppy output. They provide armed protection for opium convoys leaving Afghanistan’s farm areas and protect heroin labs along the Pakistan border. In addition, they work with kidnapping rings that have snared diplomats, journalists, U.S. contractors, and wealthy local businessmen. They cooperate with gunrunners, human traffickers, and the smuggling gangs that illegally export millions of dollars worth of Afghan antiquities.

They also extort monthly payments from legal Afghan businesses, terrorizing village shopkeepers and even nationwide cellphone providers, attacking their homes and premises if they don’t comply. District-level Taliban commanders collect fees as high as $250 per truck passing through their control zones from import-export firms and trucking companies, even “taxing” the tankers carrying jet fuel to NATO air bases in Kandahar and Bagram. More:

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