AFGHANISTAN holds over $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits, which the Taliban regime is utilizing as a financial engine to secure power rather than foster national development. By accelerating mining contracts in provinces like Nangarhar and Badakhshan, the regime has consolidated control through patronage, raising concerns regarding transparency and the distribution of wealth among the impoverished population. The warning signs are already visible.
There are mounting reports of coercion, forced land displacement, environmental damage and the use of children in hazardous mining work. These are the classic social costs of an extractive sector operating without independent regulation, oversight or community consent. When licensing, royalties and direct payments are negotiated behind closed doors, the line between state revenue and private gain disappears. Instead of building schools or hospitals, mining wealth risks becoming a tool to reward allies and punish opponents. International mechanisms meant to prevent exactly this have been shut out.
Afghanistan was suspended from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in June 2024, removing one of the few remaining checks on how resource money is tracked and reported. That same year the Taliban’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum announced more than $7 billion in investment commitments from China, Qatar, Türkiye, Iran and the United Kingdom. Yet the details of most agreements remain undisclosed. Without public contracts, bidding processes or audit trails, it is impossible to know what the state is getting in return, what percentage is going to the treasury and what is being siphoned off.
The politics of the sector became even starker in July 2024 with the appointment of Hidayatullah Badri as Minister of Mines and Petroleum. Badri is on the UN sanctions list, yet he now oversees the portfolio that controls Afghanistan’s most valuable assets. That appointment sent a clear signal to investors and to Afghans that mining would be managed through the Taliban owned networks instead of independent institutions. Control is also being enforced on the ground. The deployment of roughly 1,000 Taliban Special Forces to Badakhshan has tightened the grip of regime on mineral-rich districts. It is a reminder that in this economic formula; security and extraction are inseparable. Mines are not just economic sites. They are strategic positions.
The central question now is not whether Afghanistan has wealth. It does. The question is what kind of economy that wealth would create? A transparent, regulated mining sector could fund infrastructure, health and education and give ordinary Afghans a stake in future. That is the promise of responsible resource development anywhere in the world. But the current model points in the opposite direction. When contracts are opaque, when oversight is gone, when sanctions-listed officials run the ministry and when revenue flows into parallel structures; mining becomes a way to sustain political power rather than to build a nation.
Mineral resources of Afghanistan could be a foundation for broad-based growth. Right now they are being used as an insurgent way of doing business. Until there is transparency in contracts, independent monitoring of revenues, protection for communities and workers and a clear separation between political authority and commercial interest, the $1 trillion underground will continue to benefit the few at the top, while the costs are paid by the people on the surface.
—Contributing columnist.
