Afghanistan. Seizing Power is Easy. Paying for It Is a Vexing Problem.

 

It's been estimated that the Taliban government has a revenue stream - drug trade included - of about $1.6 billion annually.

The government the Talibs toppled had a budget of $11 billion.  Of that, 80 per cent came in the form of foreign aid.  Afghanistan's benefactors tend to be those countries that are near the top of the Taliban's enemies list. 

The bottom line: unless the Talibs find a new source of foreign aid willing to cough up billions of dollars every year to prop up the new government, the Taliban have a liquidity problem.  

Could China pick up the slack? Possibly but on terms highly advantageous to Beijing, which has long eyed Afghanistan's mineral resources. 

 

All the Talibs need do is look next door to Pakistan, the Baloch homeland in the south to be exact, where the Pakistani's bartered away control of the resource-rich south to China on a 40-year lease.  The Balochs meanwhile are revolting, accusing China of hogging the limited fresh water reserves and pillaging the coastal fishery.

China is also pitching the idea of not just foreign aid but military assistance also. China is interested in establishing a "peacekeeping" force in Afghanistan ostensibly to defend the Taliban government from predation by hostile Muslim tribes on its borders. Yeah, right.

China's peacekeeping offer, no matter how onerous, may be one the Talibs can't refuse. Just one week since the Taliban rolled up Afghanistan, including Kabul, a new resistance is emerging. 

Groups of armed Afghans attacked the Taliban on Friday, driving Afghanistan's new rulers out of three northern districts, the first assault against the Islamist militants since they swept into Kabul last week and seized control of the government.

Local anti-Taliban commanders claimed in interviews they had killed as many as 30 of the group’s fighters and captured 20 in the takeover of the districts in Baghlan province, just over 100 miles north of the capital. Former Afghan service members were joined in the fight, they said, by local civilians. Images shared online showed celebrations as the red, green and black Afghan national flag — rather than the white flag of the Taliban — was raised over government buildings.

It's much too soon to imagine the rebirth of the old Northern Alliance that, by 2001 had fought the first Taliban regime to a standstill but it remains to be seen if a resistance could attract Western support as the Mujahedeen did during the Soviet occupation.