Could have the US addressed the Taliban resurgence?

When the US thought it kicked out the Taliban after they ruled Afghanistan from 1996 through 2001, Bush, its president, focused on “nation building”, promising that women would be free, in order to leverage its support among females, and creating an Afghan military in the American image. 

The Taliban, were more pragmatic. Instead of spending the money they didn’t have, like Bush did, they decided to build a financial empire in order to regroup and eventually regain control over that country. As of today, they’ve rebuilt their fighting force from about 30,000 soldiers in 2010 to perhaps 100,000 today. 

They accomplished that by setting up a constant stream of income that has amounted to $400 million per year around 2011, and might have grown to $1.5 billion annually. To accomplish that, their cash-flow was secured through a variety of sources and a widespread taxation system. 

They first relied on foreign donations, coming from the “usual suspects” like Pakistan, Iran and Putin (the man was too happy to reciprocate Reagan's help to the mujaheddin during Soviet occupation) even though each players denies it. 

In addition private citizens from Pakistan and Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, threw money into their coffers amounting in the half a billion dollar range a year. Another excellent reason to purchase an electric car!

Then, there also was generalized extortion as well as the drug trade (Afghanistan is the world's largest grower of opium), to brings even more money. Its estimated annual exports can reach several billion dollars and are employing almost 120,000 Afghans. Where were our B-53 bombers that should have sprayed and eradicated these opium fields? 

Of course, the Taliban deny their involvement in the drug business. The 10% tax collected from opium farmers and refiners earn them up to another $400 million a year. 

The Taliban's financial network extended well beyond taxing just the opium business; in an open letter in 2018, the Taliban warned Afghan traders to pay their taxes on all goods - including fuel and construction materials - when traveling through areas they controlled. 

After ousting the Afghan government, the Taliban now controls all the major trade routes in the country, as well as border crossings, creating more opportunities to tax imports and exports. To add insult to injury, Taliban have also lined their pockets by taxing the money we lavished Afghans to build their infrastructure and services. Good job America! 

For instance, the Afghanistan's Electricity Company told the BBC that in 2018, the Taliban siphoned more than $2 million a year by billing electricity to consumers. 

There are also the country’s minerals resources and precious stones, still under-exploited as a result of years of war. That resource is estimated to be worth $1 billion annually, according to the Afghan government. The Taliban have already taken control of mining sites and extorted money from ongoing legal and illegal mining operations. 

All this to say that there was a very low-hanging fruit in the 20 years of occupation that we’ve totally chose to ignore, and that was cutting these sources of revenue and drying the financial stream that has made the Taliban stronger than ever before. 

Instead, we choose to shower corrupt Afghans with money, believing that their medieval culture would make a miraculous U-turn, that these leaders would be honest and the a US-inspired military would work. 

How naive were we or better yet, how idiots were we to believe that Congress which gets its money from Big Oil and the Military-Industrial-Complex would act differently than it did?