Taliban and Russia form $1bn trade alliance
It will also be joined by Iran and Pakistan. Russian power engineers have already presented their project in Kabul.
The Afghan administration, ruled by the Taliban, has created a consortium of companies from Russia, Iran and Pakistan. They will develop an investment plan and together develop energy, infrastructure and resource extraction in the Afghan provinces. At the same time, power engineers from Tatarstan have already met with the Minister of Industry and Trade of Afghanistan, Nuriddin Azizi.
In total, the consortium under the auspices of Afghanistan plans to allocate up to a billion dollars for infrastructure and energy projects. It is assumed that the Russian side will act as both an investor and a contractor.
Specialists from Tatarstan intend to build coal-fired power plants and a plant for processing coal into oil products in the country. Afghanistan produces only 30% of the electricity it consumes and imports it from neighboring countries, while purchasing oil products entirely from abroad. At the same time, a lot of coal is mined in the country itself.
“Today in Afghanistan, electricity is only available for an hour and a half a day. In the northern regions, the state of energy, partially destroyed by hostilities, is close to collapse,” said Rustam Khabibullin, general director of the Charitable Patriotic Foundation of Muslims of Russia.
The Taliban’s plans are ambitious: in addition to energy projects, they want to build a second network of tunnels through the Salang Pass, connecting northern Afghanistan with the rest of the country, and restore the main highway between Kabul and Herat province. At the same time, the authorities want to deploy special economic zones to attract foreign investment – and promise to provide security to the private sector.
The Taliban had to look for new partners for the development of the country after coming to power. Because of this, the international community has reduced funding for the country and imposed sanctions against the Afghan banking sector.
* the movement is recognized as terrorist and banned in Russia.
