Benefiting Both Sides

Just as NATO is meeting to discuss its member-countries' obligations to agree to funding Afghanistan's military to ensure it is capable of defending the country after foreign troop withdrawals are completed in 2014, so too is the Afghanistan Taliban busy setting the stage for their own funding drive. 

And while the funding source for the government of President Hamid Karzai will be largely from Western nations already hit doubly by what it has cost them over the past ten years to assist the country, and coping with the global financial downturn, the Taliban is appealing to sympathetic Muslims to support their drive to restore themselves to power in Afghanistan.

President Karzai feels his country is completely entitled to expect that NATO and United Nations member countries represented by the Western, non-Muslim countries will continue to supply him and his country, despite rampant and continuing and traditionally characteristic corruption, with the funding he feels he needs to succeed in his mission to maintain his presidency.

The Taliban of course receives a huge part of its financial resources through opium sales.  Afghanistan produces over 90% of the world's opium.  Poppy fields, magnificent to behold, have completely overtaken the cultivation of grains, for Afghanistan's farmers have realized how much more they can benefit financially by supplying the world market for opiates than merely feeding themselves.

But insurrection, the purchase of new and improved and costly military technology is not cheap, and paying the wages of otherwise-unemployed young Afghan men to keep the insurgency going takes money and commitment.  And the Taliban is looking for commitment and money from those whom they feel should be supporting their mission to retake Afghanistan and restore it to the medieval fiefdom they were forced to flee from when NATO exploded on the scene a decade earlier in search of Osama bin Laden.

"In the light of Islamic Shariah, all Muslims everywhere are duty-bound to join the Jihad with money and soul.  (The Taliban) are still waging legitimate Jihad single-handedly with mere help from common sincere Islam-loving masses and is in dire need of financial assistance from the Muslim brothers world-wide for its military and non-military expenditures", a Taliban website announces.

And for the answer as to why wealthy oil-rich Muslim states have not come forward as good Muslim brothers to aid and assist the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, here's a bit of a hint.  Western and Afghan intelligence has it that most Taliban funds emanate from regional Muslim communities and Islamist networks in the Gulf States.

The country's multi-billion dollar opium production aside - which just happens to benefit both sides.