Huge volumes of “smuggled” timber are now tied up in the increasingly volatile conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with new data obtained by Wood Central showing that the Taliban have ramped up felled timber along one of the world’s most dangerous land borders.
Officially, $36 million worth of “wood, articles of wood and charcoal” were traded across the Durand Line last year—about 5.5% of the total trade along the 2,640-kilometre Afghan-Pakistan border, which runs from the Iran border in the west to the China border in the east. However, whilst that figure represents a significant ramp-up on the pre-2021 Taliban occupation, analysts say that the figure significantly understates the “grey market” in Afghanistan’s eastern regions, where hillsides of cedar and pine are stripped bare and sold into the Pakistani supply chains.
According to a report published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime last year, “timber smuggling from eastern provinces such as Kunar, Nuristan and Nangarhar into Pakistan has intensified, with Taliban officials levying taxes on the trade,” documenting checkpoint taxation, informal routes and networks that move wood across the porous frontier. Supported by fieldwork and remote‑sensing, the group claims timber trafficking – now one of organised crime’s most lucrative commodities – has become institutionalised in many borders.
At the same time, the United Nations has warned that natural‑resource monetisation has expanded since 2021. A 2022 report by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute revealed that “illegal logging and timber trafficking have become part of the Taliban’s revenue model,” noting that local commanders frequently facilitate extraction despite public commitments to enforcement. It comes as U.N. assessments have signalled an uptick in the exploitation of coal, timber and other resources, with traditional aid channels being cut off. Field reporting, satellite imagery and humanitarian assessments paint a stark picture on the ground.
Last year, Wood Central reported that timber has long been one of Afghanistan’s economic drivers, which has had numerous consequences over the years, with deforestation and pollution reportedly killing at least 3,000 people a year. Afghan forests have been fuelling a booming trade in conflict timber for decades, with smuggled timber railway ‘sleepers’ exported from Pakistan and funding terror across the region. And whilst the Taliban ostensibly sought to ban timber exports, there is little evidence that the Taliban has cracked down on selling conflict timber.
According to Scientific American, the Taliban has taken “few practical steps” to address conflict timber or deforestation. And whilst the Taliban has committed to developing a Green Unit to halt deforestation, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) said the unit was only “under process.”
The difficulty for the Taliban and previous Afghan governments looking to curb conflict timber is the remoteness of the communities where logging occurs: “Officials simply lack the staffing or resources to physically assess, let alone catch, offenders,” according to Kern Hendricks, a journalist who lived in Kabul from 2017 to 2021, who spoke of the challenges faced by the pre-Talbian government in endorcing strict logging bans in the eastern provinces.
- To learn more about the history of timber smuggling in the Afghan eastern provinces – which saw pine, cedar and oak forests shrink from more than 2.8 million hectares in 1977 to 930,000 hectares in 2016 – click here for Wood Central’s special feature.
