UN sanctions only 6 of 34 Taliban governors
September 17, 2012The Taliban has powerful shadow governors overseeing operations in nearly every province in Afghanistan. But the UN-imposed asset freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo against the Afghan terrorist group excludes dozens of these Taliban governors from international sanctions.
A new report from the UN’s Taliban sanctions monitoring team indicates that at least six, but no more than 11 Taliban provincial governors, are blacklisted under UN Resolution 1988—the 2011 resolution that separated the Taliban and Al Qaeda sanctions lists. At least 42 individuals are known to be serving or have served as provincial governors in the past year.
The monitoring team recommends that the UN security council consider sanctioning these individuals, saying “it would seem logical to add the missing names.”
The report notes that the provincial governors often move across borders, and applying the travel ban would help increase pressure against them.
Although the UN report received ample media coverage for its analysis of the Taliban’s revenues, the revelation that so few Taliban governors are sanctioned was totally overlooked by the news wire services. Reuters didn’t mention the recommendation, the Associated Press focused on sanctions as a negotiation tactic, and Agence France Presse focused on Taliban fundraising.
Hat tip to Twitter user El Grillo for sending a link to the text of the UN report.
Money Jihad 
The UN’s so-called Consolidated Lists of Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders and funders is terribly out of date, seriously weakening the international effort to combat terrorism and terrorism financing. I write about this problem in detail in my book Flawed Diplomacy: The United Nations and the War on Terrorism published by Potomac Books.
[…] sanctions, that the Taliban retains its taxing authority over Afghans, and that the UN sanctions only 18 percent of the Taliban’s provincial shadow governors in […]