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Subscribe to RSSSix Afghan civilians are reportedly dead after a Taliban suicide bomber detonated explosives in Kabul. NBC's Atia Abawi reports.
The Taliban network in Afghanistan raised about $400 million last year from sources that included donations, taxing local economies and extorting money from such targets as drug dealers, cell phone operators and aid projects, the U.N. reported Tuesday.
About $275 million of that income reached Taliban leadership and the rest was collected, spent or misappropriated at the local level, according to the report to the U.N. Security Council by the sanctions monitoring team.
"The team understands Taliban funding as follows: revenue raised from taxing the local economy serves primarily to support local operations and is only in a few cases channeled upwards," the report said.
"Revenue extorted from nation-wide enterprises such as narcotics producers and traffickers, construction and trucking companies, mobile telephone operators, mining companies and aid and development projects goes to the Taliban Financial Commission which answers to the Taliban leadership," it said.
Local taxes imposed by the Taliban include a 10 percent tax on harvest and a 2.5 percent tax on wealth, the report said. The group will also tax services such as water or electricity, even though it has no control over the supply, and in some areas it will charge small businesses a 10 percent tax.
NBC's Atia Abawi reports from Kabul, where a Taliban source tells NBC News that they have a plan to either kidnap or kill Prince Harry, who is currently deployed in Afghanistan.
Another lucrative source of income has been the foreign funding of aid projects.
"Estimates of Taliban income from contracts funded by the United States and other overseas donors range from 10 to 20 percent of the total, usually by the Taliban agreeing protection money with the contractor or demanding a cut," the report said.
Donations were another major source of funding, which also went directly to the Taliban leadership.
The estimate covers the financial year ended March 20, 2012.
The U.N. team warned against a general perception that the Taliban's main source of income was Afghanistan's opium poppy economy. Afghanistan has long been the world's leading supplier of opium, accounting for about 90 percent of global output.
It said that Afghan officials estimate that the Taliban earned about $100 million in 2011/2012 from the opium poppy industry, a small share considering the annual value of the drug crop is estimated at $3.6 billion to $4 billion.
"This suggests that the Taliban do not make great efforts to exploit this potential source of revenue," the report said.
"While it provides enough to finance much of the insurgency in the main poppy growing provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan, the money raised from the drug trade is insufficient to meet the cost of insurgent activity elsewhere," it said.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force estimated that between $100 million and $155 million of the Taliban's income was spent mounting attacks in 2011, while the rest maintained the insurgency, according to the U.N. report.
"Since 2006 the Taliban have managed to finance an ever-increasing number of attacks, reflecting a year-on-year increase in income," the U.N. report said.
U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in late 2001 when it refused to hand over al-Qaida militants, including Osama bin Laden, after the Islamist network's hijacked airliner attacks on the United States on Sept. 11 that year.
Foreign troops have started gradually handing over security control to Afghan soldiers and police, a process that is due to be completed by the end of 2014.
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Vietnam Part II: A very powerful, rich, country with a top notch military wins the battles but loses the war. The enemy, a rag tag bunch of locals with no tanks, no planes, no military bases, fights, runs, hides. Hide among the people. Look like everyone else. Hide across the border. The big, powerful, rich country doesn't spend any time winning the hearts or minds of the native people. All they see are foreigners who never seem to go home. I blame our politicians, not our soldiers. Never a real plan. Just revenge. We'lls show them. Maybe they'll show us after we leave. The Vietnamese were never interested in anything more than getting the Amercans out, after being ruled by the Chinese, Japenese, and French. The Taliban and Al Quida will spread their ant west, anti christian, ideology wherever they can. This 11 year war is far from over. We never had a plan.
I highly doubt these sheep herders make much money. The bankers and corporations are the ones making the big dollars.
I rather doubt they'd care about that stuff if we weren't occupying their country and murdering their people.
Your other points I agree with.
The only reason the US is in Afgahnistan is for the mineral resources. Otherwise we should get out and let the Taliban have the Country and its millions of illiterates and stop funding Pakistan. If we didn't waste so much of our resources we wouldn't have to rely on foreign sources.
at 275M of 400M actually used and at 10% and 2.5% their tax system is as or more efficient than the US and at a lower tax rate.
Something wrong here.
While I am/was against anything beyond the intial invasion, we did TRY to work with the locals, and succeeded as they did most of the fighting on the ground, unless your memory fails you. We also had Deltas and other SF going from town to town giving handouts to the elders..... Maybe it didn't work, but no need to assume everything we do was bumbled.
Why isn't NBC reporting that the Egyptians, aka The Muslim Brotherhood, stormed the US embassy today and tore up the US flag.
Are we occupying Egypt? No we are not! We are giving them millions and millions of US taxpayer money though.
Too bad we don't have enough money to feed millions of American children who go hungry EVERYDAY!!!
I wish at least one US reporter would have enough courage to ask Obama tough questions. Why are they so afraid to ask him the simple questions? Will one US reporter ask him about Egypt?
Jo Ann -
They don't ask the tough questions because first - their questions will go unanswered (without a doubt) and second they will be banned from the WH! (If not banned, relegated to a section of the Press Room where the high school newspaper reporters are!)
And how much of this went to Karzai??? We always get suckered in the end ...........
Had we gone in there with force in the first place ... leaving Iraq under wraps as they were ... maybe we might have accomplished something. As it is ... as with Iraq ... get the hell out of there with a little honor left and as few additional lives lost as possible ...............
and not even so much as a thank you note.
399.9million of it was US taxpayers money handed over, compliments of the best government money can buy!
Jo Ann -- If you are going to complain about something, at least post a link so the rest of us can understand what you are talking about.
$400 million? That's much less than what it costs us for a cheap Obama vacation! Another fluff article by NBC!
They probably made a big investment in Halliburton stock
Here it is freedomfrys.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/egyptians-flood-us-embassy-protest-anti-islam-film/story?id=17211455#.UE_NjqDcy4Q
Reports are they stormed the US embassy and tore down the US flag and replaced it with a Muslim black flag. They are upset about a movie that was produced in the States. I didn't even know about this movie.
The people in Egypt are now trying to tell the people in the US what we can see and what we cannot see. Egypt has been turned into a radical country and it's going to get worse. Trust. Some people have said that if Mubarak were still in power this would not have happened. Thanks Obama.
Can a brave reporter ask Obama his thoughts on this? He needs to also be asked why he will not meet with Israel. During his 2008 campaign he promised that he will meet with every leader if needed.
Bush, Cheney and Haliburton had a plan.
The plan has been executed, along with Osama bin Laden. It is time to leave, and we are leaving.
Afghanistan has been a pretty rough and tumble place since long before we arrived, and will be long after. We had to do what we started in 2001, and we should have been done 5 or 6 years ago. Unfortunately, somehow the war in Afghanistan and search for bin Laden metamorphosed into a war against Saddam Hussein.
Now, 8 years later, people are shocked that we are not done.
The only solution to ending "our" war in Afghanistan is to turn the country over to its next door neighbor China.
Have a UN sanctioned "Peace Keeping" force of 250,000 soldiers go into Afghanistan and seal the borders from weapons and drugs, disarm everyone in the country, burn the heroin crops, kill the insurgents, and develop the rare-earth minerals in NE Afghanistan as a source of revenue.
Besides, China won the Vietnam war. Its time they won a war for us.
The Taliban better hope Obama doesn't get re-elected. He hates rich people.
The war in Afghanistan/Pakistan is not a traditional war, meaning that we are not fighting against a country or government but we're fighting against terrorists who don't belong to any specific country. They are fighting for Islam. This is why 9/11 happened.
With the help of Obama these group of terrorists are now in Egypt and Libya. These terrorists are infiltrating the governments of these countries. Over the past months the Obama admin. has remained silent while they have become stronger. Americans have now been killed.
Listen closely to how Obama is responding to the terrible things happening in Egypt and Libya. In so many words he is actually blaming the American who produced this film and treating the terrorists with a slap on the hand by telling them they shouldn't do these kinds of things.
We cannot allow Obama to blame the American. This is America. We have freedom of speech no matter how awful the speech may be.
Lets see if Obama tells the world that America has freedom of speech and at the same time coming down hard on these maniacs in Libya and Egypt.
If they really made that much money, seems like they are doing better then the U.S.
Follow a lot of the money and it will directly point BACK to the aid provided by American taxpayers.
Anywhere in the World the U.S. gives aid, expect unscrupulous individuals will take advantage of the situation. Haiti "reconstruction" is a good example. The "leaches" poising as an "aid distribution controlling authority" is as bad as a terrorist organization. Uh oh......Mr. Clinton on scene as the Secretary of the State announces more aid.
thats kind of what I was thinking as I read this story, based on whats occured in other parts of the world, the example that comes to mind is Somalia in the "90's" we seem to give a lot of aid to these parts of the world that never seems to make it to where its intended and yet we keep on doing it, seems if I smash my thumb with a hammer I dont want to do it again.
The $3 billion given to Israel by our government is another example of "unscrupulous" because despite the Geneva Convention and every American President's requests, Israel continues to build illegal settlements and still collects our $3 billion. Shameful.
I'd rather it go to Israel than to Karzai or the palistinians, or any arab nation for that matter
Prince Harry Should Have Kept His Cloths on.He would not be where he is now if if he had.
Lesson for Harry.
so being in the military is a pushiment? Screw you
So, basically it's just like we described the Taliban from the outset. They are nothing but organized crime operating under the guise of 'religion', just like the Catholic Church, who has managed to buy their own country!
Murderers, thieves, sadists, masochists, and pedophiles. And thats just the Taliban thats in the government.
How much of that money is stolen and misdirected from the United States.
Best guess - almost ALL of it. Cut off the aid, burn the poppy fields, and problem solved. Let the Chinese supply 'security' for their resource developments . . . and those guys will simply shoot and cremate.
Disturbing to know of this amount of money to such evil people. It's also disturbing to me to know that Israel is given $3 billion of our much needed tax dollars "yearly" as reported on the CNN exposé called "God's Warriors" under the Jewish section. We get nothing in return from Israel except words of solidarity. It's troubling to know that the Taliban makes money from wicked sources and our government "gives" our money away to a one sided "ally". So much money down the drain when it could be used to help the homeless, mentally disturbed, children, education, seniors, medicines, etc., etc. Life is just not fair.
No Think Wise. We do get something for it: people that hate us.
Israel is very costly to us. Probably about a million dollars per Israeli citizen. When I ask Arab students why we have terrorism, the most common answer is because of our support of Israel.
The guy who made the movie might next make one that explains why 90% of all the Wall Street Crooks in jail are Jewish.
Not mentioned in the article is that every shipment of U.S. military supplies into Afghanistan is also "taxed" by the Taliban, so ultimately we are paying taxes to the Taliban to get supplies to our own troops who fight them.
The only solution to ending "our" war in Afghanistan is to turn the country over to its next door neighbor China.
Have a UN sanctioned "Peace Keeping" force of 250,000 soldiers go into Afghanistan and seal the borders from weapons and drugs, disarm everyone in the country, burn the heroin crops, kill the insurgents, and develop the rare-earth minerals in NE Afghanistan as a source of revenue.
Besides, China won the Vietnam war. Its time they won a war for us.
You know, the Bain Capital model...
So much for the image that our senior "intelligence" likes to present of just a handful of guys living in caves. All too often we see the same thing, someone proclaims that they're dead or dying and later we find that they're well funded and on the move. I suppose some of it could be misinformation to keep up demand for those that profit the most from our troop placement but I'm not 100% convinced that the Taliban (and alQuada) is just going to fade away like the last holdouts of a broken army.
I made about $400.13
so almost a third of the money never reaches taliban leadership? even the so called "radicals" and "fundamentalist" see a big opportunity here. someone should get a documentary in there asking about that. since we cant seem to kill them off lets just embarrass them with that!
perhaps we should elect them to fix our economy since our leaders dont seem to have a clue.
This only demonstrates insecurity and lack of self control, making their belief in Allah seem fragile and Egyptians appear uneducated and violent.
Wow, posted this comment to the story on Egypt - I've seen other people say it happens, but this is the first time my post "went elsewhere", ...sorry.
Just let them worship their pedophile.
like the catholic and protestant Christians pedophiles right LOL
whats their income to debt ratio? are they running a deficit? 400 million buys a lot of fake identification.
Sounds just like a drug cartel, send in the anti-drug police.
The only solution to ending "our" war in Afghanistan is to turn the country over to its next door neighbor China.
Have a UN sanctioned "Peace Keeping" force of 250,000 soldiers go into Afghanistan and seal the borders from weapons and drugs, disarm everyone in the country, burn the heroin crops, kill the insurgents, and develop the rare-earth minerals in NE Afghanistan as a source of revenue.
Besides, China won the Vietnam war. Its time they won a war for us.
My guess is the majority of that $400 milion came in the form of monies siphoned off the US given the billions we've wasted in this effort... to accomplish what again?
gosh ProFreedom... you really think that might be happening?
If you have an alternate viewpoint then share it. Otherwise...
If they know that they made that much, then they know where they got it from and how to stop them from getting it.
Even when you peal off their savage and backwards demeanor, under the skin, the Taliban are greedy money grabbers, like any of the corporate, bottom-line predators around the globe!!
Regarding money, the Taliban and American progressives work pretty much the same!
Pre- 9/11 Taliban were negotiated with as they were recognized by us as a valid government. I think we were the only ones to recognize them as a valid government. Naturally, it was over "resources" with Halliburton's Western Corridor pipeline taking center stage. These negotiations were taking place as late as summer 2001. The one catch was the Taliban insisted on turning bin Laden over to a "neutral court" - not us. That didn't sit well with the Bush administration which included us receiving Osama as part of the negotiations . Post - 9/11, the near-complete Afghanistan invasion plan that had been in the works for 4 or 5 years was initiated. By the beginning of 2002, Tommy Franks had already been instructed to map out his invasion of Iraq.
The Taliban were knocked out of power and the Opium crops were nearly decimated. After Karzai was hand-picked and put in power, we shifted our priorities to purple thumbs in Iraq. Karzai's brother was the biggest drug lord in Afghanistan so it's no surprise how that all turned out with the crops making a strong return as well as the Taliban trying to regain their control of the government.
Meanwhile, while we continue to dump money and lives into this ridiculous conflict that, IMHO, ended on May 1st 2011, who do you think has been contracting the mineral resources for years... China, who else.
I think the USA should send them a bill for $400 million because we made their shxthole country safe so they can make this kind of money. This sure would help with out deficit. Included with the bill should be a note "payable within 30 days or if not paid we will nuke your shxthole country off the face of the earth.
The US then would be in a win win situation, getting the money or nuking this terrorist shxthole country off the face of the earth.
The Taliban are experts in assisting the 800 mile refueling/supply route through Pakistan and Afghanistan. Arm chair generals don't seem to know how supplies get to move so smoothly through enemy territory. Yes is possible if not likely that a portion of the materials moved into that area have Taliban finger prints. Yes history shows that in the US during WWII, payoffs to organized crime long shore men, bosses to assured many a needed supply got where it was intended. It often astonishes everyone what naive comments are made by country men, in a nation that has had so many long and fruitless wars. In God we trust, fine motto, but if want to win a war you have to use your common sense, until you could follow the group leadership that did make sense.
PS: I just happen to know a few veterans, one man in particular, was with Patton's 3rf, was shot 5 times, lost a leg, and good use of his right arm, miracle enough, when you consider that he was left for dead three days earlier, he was 18 years old. I have to doubt anyone's claim at being that tough, while he lived into 80's, he seem to live like six people. I never needed more that to hear one order to know what he wanted. Yes sir, no sir, how high sir, not bad for two families, eleven children, three businesses and a full time job!
When they get tired of torturing and murdering, they could transition into nonprofit fundraising consulting.
Foreign troops have started gradually handing over security control to Afghan soldiers and police, a process that is due to be completed by the end of 2014. What a bunch of crap..there is no security there, if there was our troops would not be killed daily..get us out of that sh-t hole.
Don't forget the millions in donations from countries like our friends in Saudi Arabia where the Taliban is seen as a necessary evil to combat the evil U.S.
yep the person whom we train are the one's that are killing our troops