During a visit to the Alborz Mountains of Iran, Taliban Minister of Mines Hedayatullah Badri announced the availability of a “golden opportunity” for Iranian companies to invest in Afghan mines.
He said that despite what he called “enemies’ slander,” conditions for economic cooperation between the two countries have become favorable.
This comes at a time when the Taliban government has been handing over the country’s mineral resources to foreign companies for more than three years, without the supervision of independent institutions; a process that has increased concerns about excessive and unsustainable extraction of Afghan mines.
According to official Iranian sources, the country is ready to invest billions of dollars in Afghanistan’s mining sector; while the Afghan people still do not have a small share of the benefits of these natural resources and there is no transparency in the contract process.
This is the second visit by senior Taliban officials to Iran in the past week. Earlier, Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, had also traveled to Tehran.
