It’s 2012 and the Taliban still taxes Afghans

Eleven years after the invasion to route Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban, the jihadists are still imposing the ushr, Islam’s 10 percent harvest tax, on some of the poorest farmers of the world.  The ushr has been a key ingredient for years in the Taliban’s recipe for maintaining a diverse revenue stream for terrorism.  While taking a cut from the opium trade has received more attention from Western media, all crops within the Taliban’s reach are subject to the scourge of ushr, which is mandated by the Koran and Hadith.

Fork it over, dirt farmer!  From ISAF’s public affairs website on June 26 (h/t Twitter user @SuzanneSues57):

Afghan colonel works to free farmers from Taliban taxation

 

PAKTIKA PROVINCE, Afghanistan (June 26, 2012) — Afghan National Army Lt. Col. Mirweis led his soldiers to victory in western Paktika province recently, improving the livelihood for the people of the province.

The mission for the ANA Kandak, in partnership with the Fort Riley, Kan., based 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, was to clear known insurgent locations in the lesser traveled Omnah district.

At first light on June 14, the operation commenced.

The people in the valley of Omnah are mainly farmers who are known for their production of pine nuts, their main source of revenue. The area was also known to be an insurgent stronghold. In the past, the insurgents would tax the populace by taking a part of the farmers’ pine nut harvests.

Getting over the pass to Omnah seemed like an easy task to the motivated Mirweis, the Kandak commander, as he led his soldiers with their armored trucks into the valley and straight to the village of Spina.

At noon on the same day, Mirweis requested to speak to the elders of Omnah and Spina in a security shura, or meeting. The people responded as dozens of elders came to speak with the Afghan army.

Mirweis led the discussion by saying that he understood that the Taliban intimidated the people by stealing their harvests and that the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will not tolerate such criminal activities. He then promised that he intended to provide a safe and secure environment for the people in Omnah, but it was also their duty to help provide information on Taliban operating in the area.

The shura concluded as he said that the people of Omnah are a strong and proud people, and that together they will stand up to the enemy.

Afghan drug lord convicted

 

Catching up on some news from earlier this year.  Recall that Islam mandates a 10 percent ushr tax on harvests, and that the Taliban has collected revenues from poppy harvests accordingly.  From the Washington Post in March:

Afghan man convicted of drug, narco-terrorism charges in U.S. court

An Afghan citizen U.S. prosecutors alleged was once one of the world’s biggest heroin suppliers was convicted of drug distribution and narco-terrorism charges Tuesday in the District’s federal court.

Haji Bagcho, who is in his 60s and faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison at his sentencing in June, said nothing as jurors found him guilty of three of four charges related to heroin trafficking and support of the Taliban. He was acquitted of one heroin distribution charge.

It was Bagcho’s second trial on the charges; in November, jurors deadlocked on all counts.

Federal prosecutors Matthew Stiglitz and Marlon Cobar, who declined to comment after the verdict, alleged that Bagcho ran his organization from a palatial compound in Afghanistan’s Nangahar province, near the border with Pakistan.

During a 2007 raid of his chemist’s neighboring house, Afghan and U.S. authorities recovered a ledger that documented $250 million in sales of 137 tons of heroin the previous year. An agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration testified that the sales represented nearly 20 percent of the world’s 2006 heroin supply.

Afghan informants purchased drugs from Bagcho’s organization and recorded incriminating calls with the dealer. One testified that Bagcho provided the Taliban with cash, supplies and weapons.

Bagcho was arrested in 2009 in Pakistan, turned over to Afghan authorities and then extradited to the United States. His son, Sucha Gul, has also been indicted in the case…

Non-Muslims bear burden in Islamic tax law

More from the Islamic department of discriminatory taxation.  Let’s jump in a time portal through Bernard Lewis’s The Arabs in History to look back at taxes under the Umayyad dynasty:

The Arabs took over only state lands and the lands of enemies of the regime.  Other landowners who recognized the new government retained effective freehold rights on payment of certain taxes.  The confiscated lands were registered and administered by the state.  Muslims were allowed to buy land outside Arabia and many were granted lands in a form of lease known as Qati’a (pl. Qata’i’).

These concessions might be cultivated lands or of dead lands, and in the latter case were usually accompanied by state aid in the form of tax remissions.  While few such grants were made by ‘Umar, many were made by his successors.  Muslim landowners outside Arabia did not pay the full land tax, but, after some dispute, paid a much smaller due known as the ‘Ushr, or tithe.  Apart from a small religious levy on Muslims all other taxes were paid by the subject non-Muslim peoples.  These included the Jizya and the Kharaj.  The Jizya, but not the Kharaj, is mentioned in the Qur’an.  In later times these terms were differentiated to mean the poll-tax payable by non-Muslims and the land tax.  Under the early Caliphate, however, while Jizya apparently already acquired the technical meaning of poll-tax, Kharaj was still a generic term for any kind of tax, and was used loosely for the collective tribute levied by the Arabs as a lump sum from each region.

What Lewis is saying is that the Umayyad rulers gave away a lot of the land conquered by Islam through concessions to Muslim ethnic Arabs.  And once those Muslim Arabs acquired the land, they only paid the ushr (which actually isn’t always a ten percent tithe—in the case of artificially irrigated land, the harvest tax is only five percent).  The “small religious levy” is, of course, zakat, although you wouldn’t know it to read all the falsehoods from modern Muslim liars who claim that zakat is greater than jizya.

As if the land giveaways and jizya of the early Umayyad period weren’t bad enough, Lewis paints a grim picture of tax policy under the later Umayyad period as well:

The main basis of the new order was the legal fiction that the land and not the landowner paid Kharaj.  From this time on, all land assessed as Kharaj land paid the full rate irrespective of the religion or nationality of its owner.  The ‘Ushr land formed under the early Caliphate continued to pay the lower rate, but could no longer be added to.  The Dhimmis in addition paid the Jizya, or poll-tax.  The working of this new system, which was to become the canonical system of Islamic jurisprudence, was made more effective by the appointment of separate financial superintendents alongside the provincial governors with the task of carrying out a survey and a census as the basis of new assessments.

“All land assessed as Kharaj land paid the full rate irrespective of the religion or nationality of its owner.”  On the surface that almost sounds fair or egalitarian, but the truth is quite the opposite.  The land assessed as kharaj land was land originally owned by non-Muslims prior to the incursion of Arab Muslims to the area.  Even those who converted to Islam were still liable for kharaj.  This was a central tenet of Arab racial supremacy during the Umayyad reign.  Non-Arabs, not just non-Muslims, suffered under Islamic taxation.

Zakat, ushr putting JeM back on map

Jaish-e-Muhammad (and Al Rehmat's coordinator, left) sets eyes on Punjab

The jihadist organization Jaish Muhammad, also known as Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), and its “charitable” cohort, Al Rehmat Trust, are off to the fundraising races again.  We first covered the illegal ushr tax collections by JeM in June.  Then this pair of excellent Express Tribune articles further explaining JeM’s fundraising efforts were published in August, but other posts kept getting in the way of covering them here.  So the stories are a little dated, but still far too important to overlook.

JeM may have sent the younger brother of the group’s deceased founder to raise zakat from rich Arab donors in Gulf states like Saudi Arabia.  Worse still, the coordinator of Al Rehmat tells the Tribune that he is able to operate on the ground and raise funds quite openly with the knowledge of provincial authorities.  Pakistani law enforcement shows zero signs of acting against JeM.  Read it all:

Militant group’s resurgence: Dreaded Jaish looks to rise again

ISLAMABAD:

After remaining underground for a decade since being banned in 2001, Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), the second largest jihadi group based in Punjab, has resumed full-scale public activity including fundraising while security agencies appear to be overlooking its ‘resurgence’.

Jaish activists and intelligence officials told The Express Tribune the group is in the process of regaining its traditional physical and financial strength which had dissipated during the ten-year ban imposed by former president Pervez Musharraf. The JeM, they added, is working on a plan to reach out to its activists who had abandoned the organisation after it came on the radar following an attack on the Indian parliament blamed on the group.

JeM is trying to consolidate avenues for fundraising, individual charity from within Pakistan and donations from Gulf states, which were partially blocked during the ban by the country’s security agencies. As a first step, an activist said, it had revived its charity, Al-Rehmat Trust, the group’s humanitarian wing once run by Master Allah Baksh, the father of Jaish founding chief Maulana Masood Azhar, till his death last year.

Maulana Ashfaq Ahmed, who is affiliated with the trust as its coordinator, told The Express Tribune from Bahawalpur, the city in southern Punjab where the organisation is based, that the charity’s fundraising was in full swing in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The trust capitalises on Masood Azhar’s name for recreating the goodwill it once enjoyed when it had fought in Afghanistan along with the Taliban before the regime was driven out of power by international forces. Government agencies have never obstructed the trust’s fundraising in either Punjab or KP, Maulana Ashfaq added. When asked why, he remarked: “You can put this question to the government and its agencies. We operate on the ground. We have a visible presence.”

Led by Azhar, Jaish is the second largest jihadi outfit in the Punjab. Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is the biggest both in terms of the number of activists and infrastructure. Maulana Ashfaq said the trust’s offices were being re-established all over Punjab and KP including Jaish’s traditional strongholds in Kohat district and Hazara region. He added that fund-raising had gained momentum with the advent of Ramazan, but declined to give an approximation of the amount the charity might fetch by Eid. A younger brother of [deceased JeM founder] Masood, Amar Azhar (possibly his codename), was in Saudi Arabia to seek donations from rich businessmen and sympathisers in Gulf states.

Illusion

Officials of law enforcement agencies in Punjab said they had never received orders for a crackdown on the trust since it was not banned by the federal interior ministry. “Provincial authorities can only ban organisations proscribed by the federal government. Otherwise, they can take us to court,” said Senator Pervez Rasheed, an adviser to the Punjab government. Additional Inspector General (Investigations) Punjab police Azam Joya said not a single case against banned organisations for raising funds was referred to provincial law enforcers in recent months.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik was not available for  comment on why an organisation using the name of Jaish chief and sharing its headquarters has not been banned. KP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain also declined to comment on the trust’s activities in the province.

Looking the other way

According to a report in this newspaper, the banned terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad is trying to make a comeback, collecting funds through ‘ushr’ in south Punjab — where the government has failed to collect agriculture tax — and limbering up to claim its pound of flesh in a troubled and confused Pakistan on behalf of its master, al Qaeda. All its banned publications like Al Qalam and Muslim Ummah, together with the banned Al Rasheed Trust’s Zarb-e-Momin and Islam are allowed to be printed by the state through issuance of ABC certificates by the ministry of information and this enables them to solicit advertisements. (Zarb-e-Momin was once edited jointly by the Jaish chief Maulana Masood Azhar and jailed terrorist Omar Sheikh.)…

The State Department’s 2010 report on global terrorism stated that, “In addition, JEM collects funds through donation requests in magazines and pamphlets.”  In this way it is silimar to the affiliated Harakat ul-Mujahideen, which has also raised zakat from magazine ads.

You grow it, we tax it

Jaish Muhammad terrorists from South Punjab, Pakistan, have been collecting the ushr (the Islamic tax on harvests) from farmers for many years according to a recent news blurb.

We have written about the oppressive nature of Islamic tax law with respect to Muslim farmers before here, here, and here.  Ushr has also been imposed by jihadist groups Lashkar-e Islam in Pakistan, by Amn Tehreek in Pakistan,  and by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Recall that the Pakistani government also has an ushr tax on top of whatever the local militants can bleed out of the farms.  From The Friday Times, “Nuggets from the Urdu Press,”  (h/t Rantburg) on June 11:

Hand it over, dirt farmer!

Jaish collecting “ushr”

Reported in the illicit publication with an ABC Certificate Al Qalam outlawed terrorist organisation Jaish Muhammad was collecting ushr in South Punjab under the auspices of Al Rehmat Trust also said to be banned. The newspaper informed that ‘ushr’ – a tax on farms legally only collectible by the state – was being collected for past ‘many years’ and its campaign was at its peak in April.

Lashkar-e Islam levies heavy zakat, ushr‏

In addition to 1) the glorious zakat and ushr taxes levied by the Pakistani government, and 2) the secular taxes imposed by the Pakistani, the Pashtun tribe known as Zakhakhel also get to experience the boundless joy of paying zakat to Lashkar-e Islam, a jihadist group associated with the Pakistani Taliban.

 

According to one tribal elder, Lashkar-e Islam’s tax rate is as high as 50 percent.  This is higher than what is normally imposed on Muslims, but could probably be justified under Islamic law on the basis of sadaqa–giving money beyond the traditional 2.5 percent rate.  After all, a really solid jihad can be awfully expensive.

 

And at 50 percent, the Zakhakhel are learning what it feels like to be taxed at a rate only normally applied by Islam against non-Muslims.  From Radio Free Europe via Spero News on Apr. 20:

 

…Like the other militant groups, Lashkar-e Islam, which is believed to number some 10,000 to 15,000 fighters, levies tribute from all those within reach. One tribal elder, who spoke on condition of anonymity, recently described to Radio Mashaal how onerous the tribute demands can be.

“To raise funds, militant groups use various methods in Tirah,” he said. “Sometimes they levy Zakat and Usher [religious taxes payable in cash], sometimes collected from the whole village each month, sometimes collected per home.”

The elder added: “For people who own agriculture land in the valley but live in Peshawar, the militant groups demand 50 percent of the land and at the end of the year they keep half of the crop. If somebody can’t afford a monthly payment or doesn’t have land, then the militant groups demand he joins the fight personally and if he can’t go then he has to hire somebody to fight for the militants instead of him.“

Beyond these demands, Bagh also let his fighters kidnap tribal leaders with whom they quarreled. It was the kidnapping of two leaders of the Zakhakhel tribe over the past several months that appears to have pushed the tribe into open conflict with Lashkar-e Islam and the bloodletting this month.

The most recent of the two kidnappings was that of a tribal elder and cleric, Maulana Mohammad Hashim, from Bazaar Zakhakhel on March 21. The cleric, who was killed the following day, had preached a Friday sermon against militancy. His abduction came just a month and a half after another Zakhakhel leader, Ghuncha Gul, who had been a commander in the Lashkar-e Islam force, was never seen again after quarreling with Manghal Bagh…

Second verse, same as the first, a little bit quieter, a little bit worse

Here’s a music-free version of our Jesus-Muhammad tax video:

The earlier version was disabled by YouTube because it included music from Sony.  But like life under Islam, it’s no fun without music.

IMU joins ushr bandwagon

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Dec. 10 that the jihadist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is penetrating deeper into Afghanistan and cementing relationships with groups like the Taliban.  It also appears that IMU is taking a lesson from the Taliban’s page by collecting ushr, the onerous Islamic tax on harvests, from Afghan locals:

…Raz Mohammad Faiz, a Pashtun who represented Takhar in the previous Afghan parliament, has an even more expansive take on the IMU, saying it has infiltrated anti-Taliban militias as well. He says that a rivalry between Hizb-e Islami and Jamiat-e Islami is contributing to insecurity in the region. Both are pan-Islamist, Afghan organizations — the former predominantly ethnic Pashtun and the latter composed of ethnic Tajiks. They have competed for political influence in the region since the late 1980s.

He says that locals in the province’s northern districts bordering Tajikistan have said Uzbeks have sought to establish relationships with religious hard-liners.

“They sought cooperation in jihad,” he says, adding that the organization’s activities are on the rise. “[The IMU has] very good relations with [Afghan] Uzbeks. They live in their houses and prefer to use their regions, which are the districts of Dashte-e Qala, Khoja Ghar, and Baharak.

“They are seen in those regions. The locals say that they are being kept by local militia commanders who give them weapons and logistical support,” he adds.

Moeen Mrastyal, a former lawmaker who represented Konduz in parliament, says ties between various jihadist movements are often downplayed. He says that together with the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, the IMU is part of a wider Islamic jihadist movement that operates freely in northern Afghanistan.

“In Konduz we have Turkmens, Uzbeks, and Tajiks who have come from [Central Asia] and are now being spotted by locals in some remote regions,” Mrastyal says.

Mrastyal says that locals are sometime forced to host these uninvited guests. “Wherever people refuse to host them, they are forced to cooperate with the help of the Afghan Taliban. And they also collect ushr,” he says, referring to an Islamic tax on farm production…

Quite so.  The ushr emanates, not from a misunderstanding of Islam, but of a plain reading of the Koran (6:142) and Hadith (Sahih Bukhari 2.24.559 and Sahih Muslim 5.2143). Like zakat, spending ushr revenues on jihad is authorized by Islamic law.

It’s an ominous sign if forced ushr payments are indeed spreading to organizations outside of the Taliban.  The ushr is a powerful tool to both enrich the ushr collectors and keep farmers subservient to the Muslim taxman.  It also suggests a growing sophistication and diversity in the revenue collection strategy of the IMU.

New tax on harbi truckers

To shore up its frightful budget, Pakistan is considering a new tax against U.S. trucks.  Sounds like Pakistan is taking a page from the Taliban’s book.  Or from Hizbul Islam’s.  Or from Caliph Omar.  From the Daily Times on Oct. 10 (h/t Rantburg):

Pakistan mulls tax on NATO trucks

LAHORE: The government is considering imposing a tax on NATO supply trucks going into Afghanistan from Pakistan, a private TV channel reported on Saturday. According to sources, NATO supplies are sent to Afghanistan through Chaman and Torkham road networks. On the other hand, some 500 trucks filled from Pakistani refineries go to Afghanistan on a daily basis and this had been the routine since the last seven years, the channel said. Numerous highways had been adversely affected due to the heavy trucks and hence the government said it considered imposing a tax on their supply. The government might also demand a road tax from the US for the past seven years of transporting these trucks, which would amount to approximately Rs 600 million, the channel reported.

For the past seven years?  Add retroactivity to the list of what’s wrong with Pakistan’s awful tax system.

Fungus outperforms Treasury

Poppies die by nature’s hand

U.S. Treasury Department officials have bragged before about putting Al Qaeda into dire financial straits, minimizing the role played by the U.S. military.  Although Treasury hasn’t made similar claims yet about the wealthy Taliban, U.S. officials have already begun setting the table by describing joint financial projects with the government of Afghanistan.  Those projects have been slow to materialize, and jihadist money continues to flow among Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

While governments dither, the Taliban’s revenues are being affected by natural forces.  The ushr tax, a 10 percent levy imposed by Islam on agricultural harvests, has been a primary engine of Taliban revenues.   The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reports this year, however, that a fungus has caused poppy production to plummet.  From the L.A. Times on Oct. 1:

Afghanistan opium production cut nearly in half by fungus

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan —

Opium production in Afghanistan this year plunged by nearly half from 2009 levels, the United Nations said in a report Thursday. But the steep drop was attributed to a fungus that wreaked havoc on the poppy crop, not to Western anti-narcotics efforts.

The scarcity dramatically drove up prices so much that officials fear poppy cultivation will prove an irresistible option in the coming year for farmers whom authorities are trying to entice to grow legal crops. And despite the blight, the premium prices probably put about as much drug money into the insurgency’s coffers as previously.

In its annual survey, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said this year’s opium output was the lowest since 2003, but even so, Afghanistan continues to dominate the world supply. Moreover, homegrown drug use is increasing. In rural areas here, opium is commonly used as a painkiller, even for small children, and the ranks of urban addicts grow daily.

Poppy growth is concentrated in southern Afghanistan, the insurgency’s main stronghold. Fighting makes it more difficult to contain drug production, though a government incentive program was credited with a slight drop in poppy cultivation in Helmand province, where intense clashes have taken place this year between Western troops and the Taliban.

The L.A. Times also says that, “Despite the blight, insurgents probably didn’t lose any profits because the scarcity drove up prices dramatically.”  That assumes the Taliban is always assessing ushr harvests based on the fair market value of opium—an unlikely proposition.  In general, a decreasing tax base for the Taliban is superior to an expanding one.

Taxes for jihad

Koranic tax revenues are being collected by Pakistani jihadists “under the nose of Pakistan’s administration.”  This South Asia News video from June highlights how zakat, ushr (including wheat), mining, and timber are being used to support jihad rather than to help the economy of Pakistan.

 

All this when Pakistan is said to be at the brink of insolvency.  Meanwhile, professors in Western universities tell us that a zakat-based tax system is a progressive model for the world to follow.  Care to amend that observation, Professor?