Hajji Mohammad Shah had no luck. Last year, he started the construction of a road near Kunduz, northern Afghanistan: twenty-five kilometers were allow farmers in the district of Chahar Dara going to sell their products to the markets of the capital. Project cost: € 63,600, provided by the Asian Development Bank. As soon as work began, a Taliban has been submitted to the council of elders in the district, the promoters of the operation, requiring payment of a contribution. They have paid € 13,900 to keep the road was destroyed even before it's over. He then presented a second emissary: \u200b\u200bpaid again. On the third petitioner, explained that it had more money. Result: one day in March of 2010, while Shah was returning from lunch in town, found the workers taken hostage by armed men, and ten of its means burnt. The losses amount to € 176,000. Groped can always resort to your insurance ...
Mohammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz, is uncertain about the explanation does not know if the elderly did not pay enough or if they have not oiled the gears right. Summarizes, fatalistic, "Here, the Taliban do what they want here. They kill, torture, vying to impose control of the racket. "Omar knows the extent of the extortion scheme set up by the Taliban, his counterpart, the" shadow governor "of Kunduz. The latter takes a percentage of almost everything that is built in the region: roads, bridges, schools, clinics ... The more you "rebuild" Afghanistan, the Taliban and more enriching.
When asked "What fills the pockets of Mullah Omar?", The answer is often only one: opium. But the opium, according to a report published in 2009 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (1), accounts for only 10 or 15% of the proceeds of the Taliban (taxes and traffic). "Most of the money is taken on the spot - confirms Kirk Meyer, head of the Afghan Threat Finance Cell U.S. embassy in Kabul. We do not know to what extent the gains made through the Helmand opium (2) are redistributed to poorer provinces. In other areas, the Taliban are living on donations of false non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to kidnapping, smuggling of cedar wood and chrome ore to the Pakistan border ... "Bankers efficient and discreet Modjaddedi Abdul Kader, 32, is an engineer. He is the grandson of Sibghatullah Modjaddedi, first President of the Republic after the fall of the communist regime in 1992 and current chairman of the Senate. In these days is building no more than seven miles of road at the foot of the mountains of the province of Laghman. In defense of his means, of course there is a deployment of guards. Amazing detail, half of them in uniform, the other half wearing traditional robes and carries strictly a beard. Why? Because the second were sent by the local Taliban leaders in exchange for € 52,000, for the duration of the work. "Poor thing! - Ensure, smiling.
If I had to pay a hundred guards, I would cost € 16,000 per month.
with the Taliban, are 8,000 €, and the site is safe. "Modjaddedi suffered four or five attacks, but by six months, everything is calm.
The governor of the province is in seventh heaven. The Americans, who finance their way through the Provincial Reconstruction Team, a military program intended to "win the hearts and minds," left to do.
The small yard of Laghman is not an isolated case. Wali Mohammad Rasul, former Deputy Minister Public Works, retired for four months, defended the system. "I spoke twice with President Hamid Karzai, for more than two hours. If we end up in the streets, circulation and trade will bring greater security automatically. As for the Taliban, we pay them already, let's stop the hypocrisy, "For the minister in charge, as with all international donors, there is the possibility of an appeal to the Taliban. Official line: we do not give a penny to the insurgents.
The main targets of this racket are the U.S. military, or more precisely their subcontractors. Each month, six to eight thousand convoys to deliver nearly two hundred military bases required material war: ammunition, gasoline, office supplies, toilet paper, televisions (3) ... Most convoys are insured by private companies, under a contract worth 2.16 billion dollars (1.6 billion euro, ie 16.6% of gross domestic product of Afghanistan in 2009) called "Host Nation Trucking ', signed in March 2009. Determination of an American officer of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF), "Do not know the chains of subcontracting. We do not know if they pay the Taliban to pass safely. (...) We put billions in there, and it is possible that a few million fall into the hands of the insurgents. "Zarghuna Walizada is the only woman to direct a transport company in Afghanistan. We receive unveiled, in an office decorated with deep purple-colored 70's style. He knows that the Americans working under pressure and that paying for trucks attacked in the street. "Who should pay? The police, insurgents, the Taliban? I do not care.
The important thing is that the trucks pass. "In some cases, the transfer takes place even without an escort:" Why should we need it? The Taliban guarantee our safety. "Of course, we pay the Taliban - recognizing Ghulam Abas Ayen, secretary of the main road hauliers' union. In the name of God, can you believe, it's extortion, pure and simple. Some private security companies, there asking $ 2,000 per container, for a few hundred kilometers of road. Half of this sum may well end up in the hands of the Taliban. "As the negotiations leading to a lift? Not directly, of course. "My boss would not like to go and discuss with the tribal chiefs of Helmand - threw out Juan Diego Gonzales, a former U.S. military now head of the Afghan private security company White Eagle. We have brokers who recruit our guards locally. (...) Sometimes it is the same tribal chief, or his son, who leads the convoy. The only thing you can hope for is that they have too much direct links with the Taliban. "He claims to work on roads where the balance of power is precarious: no warlord to ensure only the entire route. This leaves some leeway in the choice of partners. But there are other roads where, as pointed out by an official of the Afghan private company from Australia Tac Force, "if you go by yourself, you risk problems. Without the permission of the local lord, they kill you. "
to him, Tac Force follows the recommendations of the Afghan Interior Ministry to identify what are the lords of the road "right".
Currently, the most powerful among them is named Ruhullah. This commander, who has never met a U.S. Army officer, has forty years. He wears a Rolex under his shalwar kamiza - the traditional dress - speaks with a voice strangely high and controls a key part of the motorway No 1, which links Kabul to the southern Pashtun, via Kandahar. Ruhullah works in partnership with the Popal brothers, owners of the Watan and cousins \u200b\u200bof President Karzai. On their way, a convoy has a typical three hundred trucks and escorted by four to five hundred private security guards. The passage of a container can be billed to Kandahar until 1200 €.
In total, according to a recent report by the House of Representatives of the United States (4), the lord of the road and its anglophone members cashing "several tens of million dollars a year" for escorting American convoys. Ruhullah, as the Popal brothers, vehemently denies the charge where the Taliban can not pass by using force. He says that last year he lost four hundred and fifty men.
Several security companies and transport have complained on several occasions with the U.S. Army, for financial losses caused by the systematic use of warlords, but not the military know how to fix the problem.
However, the money does not arrive to the Taliban only with the rifle. Also passes through efficient and discreet bankers who make the important transit donations arriving from the Gulf, via Dubai and Pakistan. Nerve center, the market for foreign exchange dealers in Kabul Serai Shahzad: three floors of galleries opening onto a courtyard, large wooden benches placed on the bare ground, covered with bundles of dollars, rupees, yuan, and a crowd worthy of the Halles of Paris in the old days. According to a study of the Afghan Threat Finance Cell, 96% of Afghans prefer those markets over the bank counter when to transfer their money.
Just enter the office of any one among the hundred or so broker (hawala) who are there: the narrow stalls, no relations with the breadth of their business, where half a dozen employees, deep leather sofas in that burn, every night on the calculator keeps track of the receipts of the day. It is a system that dates from the eighth century. Allows you to get in a few hours on the other side the planet, an agent affiliated to you, hundreds of thousands of euro with a minimum fee. According to Hajji Najeebullah Akhtary, secretary of the union of foreign exchange dealers of Kabul, passing here every day for 4 million euro. The system is based on trust: everyone knows its customers or its guarantors.
A chain of complicity Since 2004, the state attempts to register these agents and get monthly details of their transactions. Akhtary, sitting under a television broadcasting an episode of the American cartoon Tom & Jerry, says that "dozens of reporters traveling here every day," and cast a look in the books of accounts. But the market in Kandahar, extremely active, remains inaccessible to inspectors, for lack of security. Yet a significant proportion of Finance of the Taliban dell'hawala passes through the system.
The Financial Intelligence Unit of the Central Bank has passed through the country of 1.3 billion dollars in Saudi banknotes in January 2007. According to his young leader, Mustafa Masudi, "money appears in the Pakistani tribal areas: can you tell me who needs Saudi riyals over there? From Peshawar [in northern Pakistan], this money is sent via the hawala in Kabul, where they are exchanged for dollars.
At this point the dollars spin up into the hills, while the riyal share to Dubai airport, in an entirely legal. "
We feel the general Mohammad Asif Jabbar Kheel, in charge of security at Kabul, scream like a longshoreman against the law that allows anyone to take to the skies with a few million in cash, provided that the state. In Dubai, then, since the economic crisis hit the country in 2009, the authorities are even less scrupulous about the origin of the funds. A U.S. official said that last year, have been transferred from Kabul airport in the UAE more than 1.75 billion euro. Interesting detail: according Masudi, most of these transfers are made from just a dozen people, mostly hawala agents. General Jabbar us to see a list. The names are underlined with anger, the impressive sums: € 360 million transferred from one person in 2009, another 69 ... All this money is not tied only to the Taliban. Some amounts are legal, others are part of international subtracted from official figures, some are linked to drug trafficking, which is not operated solely by the insurgents. These tickets pallets wrapped in plastic and loaded in the holds of Ariana Afghan Airlines are also a symptom of the difficulties of the state to control its own finances. Last year there were only collected € 636 million of customs duties, while the administration might
get double. The head of customs, Said Mubin Shah, a young vice-minister of good will, can not travel to some border crossings because they never asked who would protect him from ...
police. Many officers, in fact, carry out customs duties on their own. Instead of Spin Boldak, Mubin Shah prefers the cover of his father a warlord suspected of collusion with the Taliban. He turns round, is not it? LOUIS
IMBERT
police. Many officers, in fact, carry out customs duties on their own. Instead of Spin Boldak, Mubin Shah prefers the cover of his father a warlord suspected of collusion with the Taliban. He turns round, is not it? LOUIS
IMBERT
Journalist.
(a) UNODC, "Addiction, crime and insurgency: The transnational threat of Afghan opium," October 2010, www.unodc.org.
(2) Province in southwestern Afghanistan, where large areas are cultivated poppy.
(3) See Syed Saleem Shahzad, "Pakistan and Afghanistan, the invasion of the neo Taliban, Le Monde diplomatique edition, October 2008.
(4) "Warlord, Inc: Extortion and corruption along the U.S. supply chain in Afghanistan," the House of Representatives, Washington, June 22, 2010.
(Translated by GP)
(a) UNODC, "Addiction, crime and insurgency: The transnational threat of Afghan opium," October 2010, www.unodc.org.
(2) Province in southwestern Afghanistan, where large areas are cultivated poppy.
(3) See Syed Saleem Shahzad, "Pakistan and Afghanistan, the invasion of the neo Taliban, Le Monde diplomatique edition, October 2008.
(4) "Warlord, Inc: Extortion and corruption along the U.S. supply chain in Afghanistan," the House of Representatives, Washington, June 22, 2010.
(Translated by GP)
Source: http://www.monde-diplomatique.it
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