The Taliban’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry has announced a significant increase in coal exports, revealing that approximately 654,000 tonnes of coal were exported over the past eight months to Pakistan, China, Iran, India, and Türkiye.
The total value of these exports reportedly exceeds $605 million.
In November 2023, the Taliban administration stated that 1,000 tonnes of coal are extracted daily in northern Afghanistan and sold to traders.
However, critics have denounced the unregulated and excessive extraction of coal, along with its low-cost export, as a form of “plundering” Afghanistan’s valuable underground resources.
