Afghanistan's new golden age of coal mines

Back to black

It’s nearly one year since the Americans beat it from Kabul, giving way to the Taliban waiting at the gate and Afghanistan’s new economy is looking very like…the old one.

Under the Taliban, Afghanistan’s coal exports have surged. It is “the Taliban’s black gold,” as  the Financial Times recently said (paywall). Booming coal exports are helping Afghanistan’s cash-strapped government fill the huge hole left in the economy by the freezing of international aid.

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As I said before, Afghanistan’s new reality feels almost as if the Americans hadn’t been there — for 21 years — with all that money, manpower and those massive dreams. But then some of the dreams were patently absurd — in intent and implementation.

In ‘The Pomegranate Peace’, the novel I wrote from my year in the US Embassy in Kabul, the fictional diplomat is appalled that Afghanistan’s lucrative poppy crop is to be substituted by pomegranate, never mind the vast difference between them in the time from planting to fruiting to sale. …