Introduction
Badakhshan Province in northeastern Afghanistan can, in terms of its mineral wealth, be regarded as a microcosm of Afghanistan as a whole; it possesses diverse and abundant mineral deposits that have for decades been a source of local and regional conflict and competition. The existence of these mines and the revenues generated from them have even influenced the formation of Badakhshan’s historical and political geography, creating an almost permanent force for its centrifugal nature and its relative autonomy from central governments. At present, this centrifugal force appears to have become active once again in Badakhshan, confronting the Taliban government with a major challenge in expanding its authority in the province, particularly in exercising control over its abundant resources and mines.

Mineral Resources and Their Importance for the Taliban Rule
Following the collapse of the Taliban’s first period of rule and the establishment of the republican system, considerable publicity initially surrounded Afghanistan’s abundant mineral resources and the conditions for exploiting them. However, given the government’s reliance on foreign aid on the one hand, and security challenges hindering the creation of the infrastructure necessary for mining on the other, the issue gradually moved off the strategic planning agenda and attention became focused solely on the extraction of more readily accessible resources such as gold, certain precious stones, coal, and salt.

From an economic perspective, the Taliban’s approach to mining can be assessed from two angles. The first is the economic dimension. The ban on poppy cultivation has significantly reduced Afghanistan’s narcotics economy, while the suspension of international financial assistance has made mines and their revenues one of the Taliban government’s principal sources of income.
However, mining is also politically important to the Taliban. Attention to mineral resources has opened the door to engagement with other countries and strengthened the Taliban’s diplomatic position internationally. The willingness and competition of major powers such as China and Russia, and even of the U.S. private sector, to engage with Kabul on investment in Afghanistan’s mineral resources—at a time when the Taliban government has still not secured international recognition—represents a major opportunity and advantage for the Taliban government. At the same time, Taliban control over mineral resources can help consolidate its rule domestically, constrain local sources of power, and pave the way for more centralized governance.
 
The Taliban Government’s Broad Mining Policies
During the five years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, it has not announced comprehensive, long-term policies and programs concerning natural and mineral resources. Apart from a few limited executive decrees issued by the Taliban leadership in areas such as banning government officials from participating in tenders and major mining investments, as well as regulations governing gold extraction, the remainder of its policies have largely focused on two main objectives:
First, generating revenue quickly, which has become the Taliban’s primary policy priority in the mineral resources sector. Within this framework, the Taliban Ministry of Mines and Petroleum reported the signing of nine major contracts worth nearly $9.2 billion with domestic and foreign companies in 2024–2025, in addition to 18 smaller contracts signed with domestic companies.

No information has been published indicating that these contracts address issues such as long-term management of natural resources, preventing unregulated exploitation, environmental challenges, or more specific matters such as miners’ working conditions. Only the Taliban leader’s most recent decree has addressed issues related to environmental protection and companies’ obligation to restore gold-mining land to its original condition after operations have ended.

The second pillar of the Taliban’s mining policy can be linked to the government’s efforts to move beyond traditional and local frameworks for managing mines. According to information published by the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum during the final months of the republic, Afghanistan’s mines were under the control of three groups during the last three years of the republican era: the government, the Taliban, and local armed militias.

Following the Taliban’s return and the elimination of the republican system, the Taliban initially refrained from challenging local militias’ control over mineral resources and limited itself to collecting taxes and revenues from them. Gradually, however, the Taliban began asserting state authority and replacing local personnel with individuals appointed from the center in the mining sector, a process that also generated significant difficulties and challenges. The widespread uprising in Balkhab led by Commander Mehdi, as well as public dissatisfaction and protests in Takhar and the Shahre Bozorg district of Badakhshan, can be regarded as some of the consequences of the Emirate’s efforts to implement these new mining policies.
 
The Taliban Government’s Challenges in the Badakhshan Mining Sector
In recent months, Badakhshan Province has been the scene of intense tensions between local Taliban commanders and the central authorities of the Emirate in Kabul and Kandahar. The events surrounding Jumah Khan Fateh, a former deputy governor of Zabul and one of the Taliban’s prominent local commanders in Badakhshan, who enjoys considerable financial and political influence in the region through his control over gold mines, lie at the center of these tensions. At the same time, the activities of anti-Taliban groups in the province have increased sharply. Several attacks by Afghanistan Freedom Front forces, as well as the several-hour seizure of Yaftal district by the newly established group “Sipahiyan-e-Mihan,” have all been part of Badakhshan’s political and security developments.

It is nevertheless clear that at least part of the conflicts in Badakhshan are economic in nature, with control over the financial and mineral resources of these areas serving as their underlying basis. From this perspective, the Badakhshan conflict began some time ago, when the Taliban attempted to exert greater control over gold mines in various parts of northern Afghanistan, including the Shahre Buozorg district of Badakhshan Province. The conflict reached its peak when the Taliban leadership issued two recent decrees concerning the investigation of the assets and properties of local officials and commanders in Badakhshan as well as the issuance of regulations for gold mining throughout Afghanistan.

In addition, measures such as appointing an ethnic Pashtun to head the Badakhshan Mines Department, deploying a 1,000-member security force from Kabul to Badakhshan to provide security for the mines, and ultimately the insistence of the Pashtun governor of Badakhshan on shutting down and suspending the operations of gold mines lacking government licenses have contributed to intensifying the region’s crisis. However, the implementation of the Taliban’s new mining policies in Badakhshan—which focus on increasing the “state’s” control over these resources and curbing local commanders and officials who benefit financially from the revenues generated by the mines—is currently facing several major and fundamental challenges:

A) Challenges in Exercising Central Government Authority over Badakhshan’s Mines
It is probably reasonable to ask why, despite the presence of the initial centers of resistance to the Taliban in Panjshir, the Taliban’s main challenge in exercising authority over mines and natural resources has emerged not in Panjshir but in the northern areas, particularly Badakhshan. The answer must be sought in the conditions prevailing in Badakhshan during the republican era.
 Badakhshan was among the areas where some local commanders and influential figures pledged allegiance to the Taliban at an early stage and helped form the Tajik component of the Taliban government. These commanders quickly established control over various parts of Badakhshan and, according to some media sources, had controlled most of the region’s mineral resources since at least four years before the collapse of the republican system. Therefore, the Tajik faction, or Badakhshani Taliban, played a decisive role in the group’s eventual victory in northern Afghanistan, particularly because control over mineral resources and the use of their revenues also appears to have contributed significantly to this success.

Against this backdrop, the Taliban leadership initially preferred not to make any overt changes to the local power structure, particularly the economic structure established by this segment of the Taliban in Badakhshan and some other northern areas. However, certain regional developments—including widespread local dissatisfaction with the performance of local officials, alongside the government’s growing need for mining revenues—led the Taliban leadership to pursue a gradual, step-by-step transformation in this sphere.

The appointment of prominent Badakhshani Taliban figures to political positions outside the northern regions—including the appointment of Mawlawi Najib Raqi as head of the Laghman command, Jumah Khan Fateh as deputy governor of Zabul, Mawlawi Amanuddin Mansour as governor of Helmand, and Fasihuddin Fitrati as Chief of Staff of the Army—should in fact be regarded as the initial steps in implementing this long-term approach. Each of these individuals is considered a prominent tribal leader and local commander from Badakhshan, while also playing a key role in controlling and administering mines in various parts of Badakhshan, including Ragh, Nusay, and Shekay.

Therefore, now that the Taliban leadership is insisting on implementing its plan to assert central authority over the resources and mines of Badakhshan, it has encountered major challenges and crises from the Tajik Taliban in the province. Ultimately, concerns over growing discontent among these local commanders and the possibility of their joining the anti-Taliban front on the one hand, and the existing ties between some of these individuals and the powerful Haqqani faction on the other, have prompted the Taliban leadership to act with greater caution in dealing with the existing crises and acts of defiance and to refrain from punishing figures such as Jumah Khan.

B) The Possibility of Anti-Taliban Forces Exploiting the Mines
The Taliban’s record of exploiting the mines of Badakhshan and the revenues generated from them during the final years of the republican era has made the group fully aware of the potential consequences of the opposition gaining access to these mines. In addition, the Taliban still remembers that one of the main reasons for the several years of resistance in Panjshir, during the group’s first period of rule, was the region’s financial self-sufficiency, derived from substantial revenues generated by the extraction of precious stones and minerals. Therefore, one possible explanation for the increased activities of anti-Taliban forces in Badakhshan is their pursuit of access to mines as a means of securing financial resources.

C) The Issue of Land and Mine Ownership in Badakhshan
A significant portion of the Taliban leadership’s recent decree on gold-mining regulations is devoted to the issue of mine ownership and the definition of the boundaries between state and private ownership. However, determining ownership rights over land and mines in Badakhshan is far from straightforward. Given the seizure of mining lands by local officials, as well as the uncertain status of large tracts of land that were allocated during the republican era to local residents or influential figures, there are considerable difficulties in establishing clear boundaries between state and private property.

For example, in an area of Badakhshan known as Shiveh, the Taliban declared lands that had been occupied by local residents and were considered private property to be state-owned. They ordered those who had previously leased these lands to gold-mining companies to terminate the contracts and return the received money to the companies, or, if they wished, to purchase the land again from the Taliban. In another case, when the possibility of gold deposits was raised in an area known as the Teachers’ Township in Ishkashim District, where land had been distributed among local residents during the republican period, the Taliban announced that residents had to sell the land to the Taliban at the proposed price; otherwise, their ownership would be forcibly revoked.

D) Considerations Related to Ethnic and Linguistic Divisions
The measures taken by the Taliban leadership and central authorities to extend state control over mines in the northern regions, particularly Badakhshan Province, could also have serious consequences in terms of deepening ethnic and linguistic divisions. The appointment of a Pashtun governor, a Pashtun head of the provincial mining department, or the deployment of a 1,000-member security unit and disarmament of local forces reinforces the perception among residents and tribal leaders that the government, in cooperation with foreign investors or non-local domestic companies, is plundering the natural resources they regard as their ancestral heritage. This perception can also be linked to the relative autonomy and centrifugal tendencies that have persisted in the region for years, supported by financial resources and the limited authority of successive central governments.

These concerns appear to have been recognized to some extent by the Taliban, as evidenced by the recent announcement of several investment projects by mining companies in indigenous areas. The announcement by the governor of Badakhshan of mining companies’ investments in 36 development projects in the province, as well as the inauguration of a project to decorate and light the streets of Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, with the active participation of actors in the mining sector, should be regarded as part of these efforts.

E) Environmental Challenges
Among the multifaceted tensions surrounding mineral resources in Badakhshan, this issue has probably received the least attention. Although the Taliban leader’s recent executive decree has addressed the issue to some extent by referring to companies’ obligations regarding the fate of land allocated for mining, field evidence indicates that the exclusive focus on mining and its material benefits has so far caused significant and, in some cases, irreparable damage to the environment and the livelihoods of local communities. The absence of comprehensive plans incorporating broader considerations, the use of heavy and inappropriate machinery in some mining areas, the use of chemicals such as cyanide in the extraction of certain mineral resources such as gold, and extensive and uncontrolled changes in land use, including the conversion of agricultural land and grazing pastures into mining areas—as occurred in the relocation of the old market in Nusay District—are all only a small part of these harms. In the long term, such practices could lead to natural consequences such as uncontrollable flooding or humanitarian crises related to food security in the region.
 
Conclusion
Currently, it seems that a significant part of the developments and unrest in the Badakhshan region is rooted in economic changes, particularly control over mineral resources, as part of the Taliban government’s efforts to strengthen its authority over the mining sector and the financial revenues derived from it. Therefore, it may be difficult to fundamentally criticize the nature of these Taliban’s efforts to consolidate its central authority over peripheral areas. In fact, government intervention in major economic sectors can offer numerous benefits, including reducing corruption and bribery at the local level, enabling planning for large-scale national projects, and potentially ensuring compliance with certain social and environmental requirements. Nevertheless, the main problem appears to lie in the Taliban’s short-term and profit-oriented approach to the mining sector, as well as in the methods it has adopted to implement its policies.

The emphasis on obtaining immediate material benefits; the closure of mines without considering their consequences for the livelihoods and economy of local populations; the extensive replacement of indigenous officials with individuals who have the least ethnic and even linguistic affinity with local residents; the disregard for the region’s economic and social conditions and requirements; and, above all, the failure to ensure that local communities receive a share of the substantial economic revenues—all of these factors could intensify frustration and discontent and increase the likelihood of broader unrest.

The impact of these developments on deepening internal divisions within the Taliban should also be added to these concerns. In such circumstances, mineral resources and the revenues generated from them may, instead of creating a foundation for the country’s broader development and progress, become an important source of domestic instability and disorder. Ultimately, the Taliban government’s failure to recognize these risks could push Badakhshan to continue along the same path that has contributed to the recent developments and turmoil in the region.