Taliban terrorists detained five men, three Afghans and two Chinese citizens, suspected of attempting to smuggle lithium across the Chinese border, the Afghan news outlet Khaama Press reported on Monday.
Multiple Afghan and international reports on the incident do not identify the men in question and do not provide any information regarding the Chinese Communist Party’s potential role in either the smuggling or the arrests. One report, citing local Taliban “authorities,” indicated the men were arrested while possessing 1,000 metric tons of rocks containing lithium. The incident occurred in Jalalabad, on Afghanistan’s eastern border with China.
Lithium is an important metal in making electric vehicle and other batteries and is considered a critical component of attempts to “transition” the world out of the widespread use of fossil fuels and into a “green” economy. About 90 percent of lithium produced today comes from Australia, Chile, and China; China is the world’s largest producer of lithium-ion batteries.
While not currently a major player in the lithium market, Afghanistan is believed to be home to some of the world’s largest lithium supplies and also sits atop generous reserves of other rare-earth minerals, fossil fuels, and natural resources generally. The Taliban has expressed tremendous interest in exploiting those resources since seizing power in the country in August 2021, the result of leftist American President Joe Biden breaking an agreement with the group to extract its troops from the country by May of that year. Taliban jihadists have pursued lucrative deals with the Chinese government to build factories and explore for natural resource wealth. Taliban leaders have also expressed interest in China’s exploitative Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which offers predatory loans to poor countries in exchange for building unwieldy infrastructure projects.
Voice of America cited Taliban official Mohammad Rasool Aqab of the Mines and Petroleum Ministry confirming the arrest and describing the smuggled rock as ore containing “up to 30 percent” lithium, illegally extracted from Afghan soil and directed towards China. According to Khaama Press, the alleged smugglers had put together a transport route cutting through Pakistan into China.
“Taliban intelligence personnel said Chinese nationals in collaboration with their Afghan partners wanted to transport the precious stones to China via Pakistan while arrested,” Khaama reported.
Afghanistan is believed to contain upwards of $1 trillion in rare-earth mineral resources, according to years of surveys and studies. Lithium is among the most valuable, but experts believe Afghanistan can also profit from its significant copper, gemstone, and iron resources.
As a result, it has for decades attracted illegal mining and smuggling. Prior to the Taliban takeover, in 2016, the government of then-President Ashraf Ghani estimated that Kabul was losing millions in profits by allowing illegal operations to mine and sell the minerals rather than the government profiting from them itself. At the time, the Taliban was one of the prime beneficiary organizations from illegal mining, just as it also maintained a firm hand over the nation’s illegal opium cultivation and production. While Taliban jihadists are not believed to have directly participated in the mining, terrorist leaders demanded payment for the safe transfer of smugglers through their areas.
In this Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015 photo, Abdul Qadir Timor, director of archaeology at the Ministry of Information and Culture, left, looks at the view of Mes Aynak valley, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, file)
“Mining is a big area of focus for the Taliban,” mining expert Jawed Noorani explained at the time, according to the New Indian, which cited Noorani as estimating that the Taliban was making “more than $1 billion in taxes on minerals.”
The Taliban’s current “interior minister,” the al-Qaeda-linked jihadist Sirajuddin Haqqani, is believed to have been among the top beneficiaries of mineral smuggling prior to the jihadist takeover in 2021.
“Afghan and U.S. industry sources say the Taliban are essentially strip-mining the country’s mineral wealth,” the Financial Times reported in July. “There is little governmental expertise available to develop a soup-to-nuts mining industry that could include mineral extraction, processing, and higher-value exports.”
Reports on Tuesday did not indicate that the Chinese government had any direct involvement in the suspected lithium operation that was shut down this week. Beijing has, however, expressed enthusiastic interest in Afghanistan’s rare-earth deposits.
“While much uncertainty remains, given the fluid situation in Afghanistan, there are huge opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries, especially in sectors such as utilities and mining,” the Chinese government newspaper Global Times salivated in August 2021, days after the Taliban conquest, proposing “more win-win cooperation between China and Afghanistan” under the Taliban. The Global Times referred to the Taliban’s return to power as a “sunny day in Kabul.” The Taliban, in turn, met with representatives of Chinese regime-friendly companies in November 2021 to discuss their “strong interest” in exploiting Afghan mineral wealth.
The Chinese government has not yet announced any large-scale mining contracts with the Taliban jihadists. It has inked two major economic proposals with the de facto government, however: the construction of a $216 million industrial park in the Kabul area and an oil extraction deal through China’s Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co. (CAPEIC).
China’s ambitions in Afghanistan have slowed in recent months as rival jihadist organizations engage in terrorist activities that endanger local Chinese business and call into question the Taliban’s iron grip on power. In December, the Islamic State took responsibility for bombing a hotel known to be frequented by Chinese travelers in Kabul. A month later, a suicide bomber detonated himself near the Afghan Foreign Ministry on a day on which Chinese officials were reported to be participating in meetings there.
Newly appointed Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang pressured Taliban leaders this week to do more to “ensure the safety of Chinese personnel and institutions” in the country during a phone call this weekend in which he also claimed Beijing supports the Taliban terrorist organization’s attempts to build an “inclusive” government in Afghanistan.