Is Russia Paying the Taliban to Kill American and NATO Soldiers?

In Afghanistan the Pashtuns are the single largest ethnic group. It is this group that makes up the majority of Taliban fighters and supporters. It should be clear that the foreign supported government in Kabul does very little governing and could not survive long on its own. To a greater or lesser extent, the Taliban have won the Afghan war.

Regardless of the outcome of the war being a negotiated political settlement or outright military victory, the Taliban are going to be a significant political force in any post conflict Afghanistan. With this inevitability in mind, the widespread reporting for close to a decade that every major regional country is supporting a Taliban faction makes perfect sense. This includes countries like China and Iran who are not supporters of Sunni fundamentalism generally speaking. It is also important to note that what is amorphously called the Taliban is closer to the myriad of rebel factions in Syria than a unified command and control structure.

Various countries support Taliban factions to make political inroads, so they can have influence and pursue their long-term regional interests relating to Afghanistan. This type of engagement works best by building trust and demonstrating each countries' value to the respective Taliban faction they support. It has been reported that Russia and other countries have provided night vision goggles in the past, an example of an item with high value. The goal is to attempt to create a long-term relationship that will endure the end of the conflict. 

The dynamic of many countries competing for lasting political influence in Afghanistan undermines the logic of the headline allegation against Russia. Vladimir Putin is regarded as being a skilled political and geopolitical strategist. It would be newsworthy indeed if Russia under his leadership has abandoned their decade long strategy of building influence in Afghanistan, and has instead adopted a pay per kill transactional relationship with Taliban factions. This allegation is based on the assertion of anonymous Western intelligence sources, with no evidence presented in 'reporting' on the matter. I will continue to give greater credibility to reasoned, fact based analysis than fact free allegations regardless of the source.

Oil Market Dysfunction (Peak Oil)

The recent unprecedented dysfunction in the oil market, has become an opportunity to remark at how wrong the concept of “Peak Oil” was. Unfortunately, the analysis of the underlying oil production dynamics are still correct. Primarily of interest is the dynamic between geology and the extraction technologies utilized. What was humorously wrong was the dominant theory of what the resulting crisis would be like. When oil rose to $140 a barrel, what did not happen was ever increasing prices until we ended up in some right-libertarian survivalist fantasy. What did happen was there was an economic recession.

The 2008 “financial” crisis justifiably brought major attention to the criminality in the global financial and real estate sectors. This criminality made the economic and social impact worse, but a false narrative that this criminality caused the crisis became accepted knowledge. The economic crisis started as a mortgage default crisis because this was simply the weakest link. With the high oil price came higher cost of transportation for people to get to work, higher prices for food and other staple products. At the end of the month when the US working poor could not pay all their bills, many chose not to pay their mortgage.

The lingering economic dysfunction since 2008, is in part a result of the failure of market dynamics to find a price that can produce enough oil and not stifle economic growth. This failure has resulted in a cycle of deflationary crises, now made worse by the dramatic drop in demand caused by the COVID-19 response. The dynamics have resulted in an observable production plateau of conventional crude oil. This not serving as a useful talking point for right-wing ideologues, spreading fear of inflation to promote austerity, does not change the geological and technological reality.