WASHINGTON — A senior Treasury Department official says the Taliban is in much stronger financial shape than al-Qaeda and relies on a wide range of criminal activities to pay for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
David Cohen, the department’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing, said Monday that the extremist group extorts money from farmers and heroin traffickers involved in Afghanistan’s booming drug trade. He said the Taliban also demands protection payments from legitimate Afghan businesses.
Portions of the Taliban’s illicit proceeds make their way out of the country and into the global financial system, he said.
Meanwhile, the disarray surrounding Afghanistan’s presidential election deepened Monday when an Afghan member of the vote-reviewing commission quit, citing “foreign interference.”
The resignation of Maulavi Mustafa Barakzai from the Electoral Complaints Commission was not expected to affect the panel’s work of sifting through allegations of massive vote-rigging in the Aug. 20 balloting, officials said.
The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
