As of: February 18, 2024, 10:08 a.m
From: Foreign Policy
Comments
Press
Split
Bashir Noorzai was once serving a life sentence in the United States.
Now he is the key figure in the growing relationship between China and the Taliban.
Bashir Noorzai was released in 2022 as part of a prisoner exchange with the United States.
There he quickly rose to a powerful position, including through mining deals with China.
A “chain reaction of corruption” is going on in Afghanistan that benefits only a few.
This article is available for the first time in German - it was first published by
Foreign Policy
magazine on February 10, 2024 .
A drug lord whose heroin empire helped finance the Taliban's long war in Afghanistan - and who was released early from a US prison in exchange for an American hostage - has now entered business with China.
Bashir Noorzai, a close friend of the extremists' supreme leader, has struck opaque joint venture deals with Chinese firms in Afghanistan that have won at least two contracts for what mining and security experts say are merely mineral and petrochemical products These are pensioner businesses that bring in a lot of money but do nothing to develop the impoverished country.
Bashir Noorzai has had a steep rise since his release.
© AFP
The Taliban's multi-billion dollar heroin production and export companies have dominated the global market for decades.
Before his imprisonment, Noorzai was the heroin trafficking don, sometimes referred to as the “Pablo Escobar of Afghanistan,” after the Colombian cocaine king who ran the Medellín cartel until his death in 1993.
Noorzai was released in 2022 - and has since become as powerful as a warlord
Noorzai - a confidant of Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban commander of the Faithful - was released in September 2022 as part of a deal negotiated by the Biden administration for the return of former US Navy diver Mark Frerichs, who was held captive for two and a half years by a Taliban offshoot, the Haqqani network, had been held hostage.
Noorzai returned home a hero and immediately went back to work.
He worked closely with Akhundzada to secure contracts for gold mining and oil and gas exploration in northern Afghanistan, despite having no mining experience, researcher Javed Noorani, an expert on Afghanistan's mining sector, told Foreign Policy.
“He has become like one of the warlords,” Noorani said, comparing Noorzai to the late Mohammad Qasim Fahim, an enormously powerful warlord who became vice president of the republic.
Noorzai's success in winning contracts for his company Afg-Chin Oil and Gas Ltd., which he founded with a Chinese partner, was due to the "non-transparent tender process" in Afghanistan and, above all, to his friendship with the top man, Noorani said .
My news
Payment card for asylum seekers: Habeck causes the next dispute - Kubicki threatens to break the traffic light
“It had to happen”: Putin dictated Navalny’s prison camp torture reading, according to Moscow insiders
Zelensky warns in Munich of a global “catastrophe” caused by Putin – Habeck wants to read new Russia sanctions
2 hours ago
Bulwark against Putin fallen: Chaos retreat from Avdiivka - Ukrainians probably let soldiers read back
Navalny dead according to Russian authorities: First report on possible cause of death read
Strange cars, no ambulances: Navalny's fellow prisoner reports “unbelievable madness” read
The drug lord is close to many Taliban leaders - China is also taking advantage of this
Noorzai is also close to the Taliban's incumbent foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, who has a tight grip on oil contracts, said a source with insider knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Noorzai's company has an exploration contract to study hydrocarbon potential near the Amu Darya, the river bordering the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
“They owe Noorzai a lot,” the source said, referring to the Taliban.
The revelation that Akhundzada is supporting his old friend's business expansion coincides with China's announcement that President Xi Jinping has accepted the credentials of the Taliban representative in Beijing as ambassador to Afghanistan, joining the rest of the world in recognizing the The legitimacy of the Taliban is breaking down.
Asadullah Bilal Karimi joined dozens of newly arrived ambassadors at a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on January 30.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin described this as normal diplomatic protocol.
China's long-held plans to exploit Afghanistan's natural resources now appear to be directly linked to the Taliban's need for money and diplomatic recognition that would give its government legitimacy.
Foreign Policy Logo © ForeignPolicy.com
Since taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the group has stolen cash and supplies flown in for humanitarian support (Foreign Policy reported on this and confirmed this in a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the U.S. watchdog agency government for the country).
The Taliban's long-standing relationship with China's ruling Communist Party has paid off since its return to power, with contracts for Chinese mining companies bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars.
Afghanistan is an important country for China - as part of Beijing's global infrastructure program
The Chinese government, which has forced about 1 million Muslim Uighurs into internment camps, appears unperturbed by the Taliban's extreme behavior.
The group has banned women from access to education and work and continues to persecute and kill members of the former government and military.
The United Nations has cataloged extensive human rights abuses by the Taliban;
The UN Security Council has repeatedly reported on the Taliban's ties to al-Qaeda and other banned terrorist organizations.
China's motivation goes beyond access to strategic minerals;
Afghanistan is a key part of Beijing's expansion of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) global infrastructure program, which plans roads and railways to transport Chinese industrial products across Central Asia to European markets.
Beijing has also shared surveillance technology and equipment with the Taliban, which serves a dual purpose: the Taliban can track their enemies more efficiently, and Chinese security authorities can identify Uyghurs under Taliban protection as members of the anti-China East Turkestan Islamic Movement - a Taliban branch whose members the Taliban cannot unilaterally extradite to China, where they would almost certainly be executed.
The Taliban's return to power is a challenge - also for China
Akhundzada is believed to be supporting attacks on civilian, police and military targets in neighboring Pakistan through the Taliban affiliate Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
The TTP, like many other transnational jihadist and terrorist groups, is being protected in Afghanistan as they fight for control of Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas.
The Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan poses a major security challenge in neighboring countries, including China, which, despite decades of proximity to the Taliban, is still not completely immune to extremism.
Chinese citizens and facilities have been attacked by Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Beijing has provided billions of dollars in BRI investments and loans to save the country from bankruptcy.
Noorzai's return to business promises to keep the money flowing into the coffers of one of the world's richest crime cartels.
Most of his business activity takes place in the southern poppy-growing region of Helmand province, where he owns vast estates and runs his businesses "like a slumdog billionaire from Mumbai," said the source, who wished to remain anonymous.
As the leader of the Noorzai tribes, he is related to many Taliban leaders and was an early and generous donor.
He is believed to have political influence within the group and acted as an intermediary with the United States before his arrest in 2005 on heroin smuggling charges.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009.
Noorzai was seen as Washington's man - but appears to have turned more towards China
Some officials in the previous administration suspected that his release could be conditional on him once again serving as Washington's liaison to the Taliban leadership.
However, his entry into the mining business could be a sign that he is no longer Washington's man and instead sees China as a future source of funding that will keep the Taliban in power.
Akhundzada has banned poppy cultivation - even though Noorzai likely has large opium supplies - thereby facilitating the Taliban's entry into the more lucrative methamphetamine market.
Meth is the product of the ephedra plant, which grows wild in Afghanistan;
but it can also be produced using chemical means that are cheap and easily available.
Meth instead of poppy seeds - but corruption still remains
Regardless of how it is made, it is much cheaper to produce than heroin and the yield is much higher.
The ban on poppy production has already led to a huge increase in meth production, as evidenced by interceptions worldwide.
On January 2, Iranian border guards announced that they had seized 171 kilograms of Afghan meth in a recent operation.
Noorzai's new ventures are a reminder that corruption has long been a hallmark of Afghanistan's mining sector.
For decades, the Afghan population was led to believe that vast reserves of raw materials - from coal, copper and iron to precious stones, lithium, marble, gold and much more - would catapult their country to prosperity.
Instead, the 20-year war and lack of infrastructure kept big companies away while the Taliban used the violence as a cover for large-scale looting.
Noorzai appears to be continuing this tradition, albeit through quasi-official channels now controlled by the Taliban.
His company has a three-year deal worth $310 million to develop the Samti gold deposit in the northern province of Takhar, a mine that has historically attracted well-connected illegal workers.
A “chain reaction of corruption” - everyone loses except Noorzai and his colleagues
Noorani, the researcher, said the mine's last contractor, West Land General Trading, also did not have the expertise or capacity to extract the estimated 31 tons of gold from the deposit's deep, rocky riverbeds, but went through with the job his connections to a minister in the previous government.
The contract stipulates that Afg-Chin will pay 56 percent of the profits to Afghanistan and that development should begin within three months.
Noorani called the contract "unprofessional and unrealistic" and said any reputable mining company would require years of review, planning and preparation before mining could begin.
Extensions have already been granted, he added.
More likely, he said, Noorzai sold shares in the company to his Chinese partner, who then sold his shares to small Chinese companies, which in turn divided their shares further, thereby blocking the flow of money in what he called a "chain reaction of corruption." would keep going.
In this rentier scenario, the mine is not developed, no profits flow to the Afghan state, no jobs are created and all investments from small subcontractors are lost, Noorani said.
Everyone loses, except Noorzai and his colleagues in the Taliban leadership.
About the author
Lynne O'Donnell
is a columnist at Foreign Policy and an Australian journalist and author.
From 2009 to 2017, she was Afghanistan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” on February 10, 2024 - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.