For two decades America and its allies expended thousands of lives and some two trillion dollars in Afghanistan to stop, they said, the Taliban returning the Central Asian country to al-Qaeda plotting and chaos. After the Islamist militants regained power 20 months ago, it was feared that would be Afghanistan’s fate. The reality is a little different.
Ask the hawala dealers, operators of a vast money-transfer market, clustered in a warren-like bazaar beside the Kabul river. Having for years helped the Taliban finance their insurgency, these well-connected moneymen, who are estimated to provide twice the volume of commercial loans that Afghanistan’s banking industry does, thought they had nothing to fear from them. The hawaladars had foiled previous efforts to regulate their largely untaxed trade by Ashraf Ghani, the country’s last nato-backed leader, and his predecessor Hamid Karzai. Yet the Taliban government has proved a more committed reformer. It has forced the hawaladars to keep computerised records and follow “Know Your Customer” requirements. Non-compliant businesses have been shut down. The boss of the money-changers’ union was stripped of his licence to operate. “With these guys, you do what you’re told,” says Babarak Amiri, a veteran hawaladar.
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