RASC News Agency: The Taliban’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has announced the revival of its registration drive for Afghanistani migrants returning from Iran and Pakistan, claiming it will dispatch nearly 2,000 “skilled workers” to Qatar. Behind the official narrative of “economic opportunity,” however, lies a familiar and cynical reality: the program functions less as an employment pipeline and more as a sophisticated extortion mechanism, preying on the country’s staggering unemployment crisis.
During the program’s previous phase, thousands of applicants drawn from Afghanistan’s estimated 15 million unemployed citizens flooded Taliban-run registration centers. Each was compelled to purchase a registration form for 200 kabuli rupees, funneling vast sums into Taliban coffers. Qatar’s actual quota, however, accommodated fewer than 1 percent of those applicants, leaving the overwhelming majority jobless, poorer, and embittered. In the latest round, the Taliban has halved the price of the form to 100 kabuli rupees, a move analysts say is less about affordability and more about volume. Reports from Kabul and multiple provinces reveal that some centers process over 2,000 registrations daily generating hundreds of thousands of rupees per day in form sales alone. For the Taliban, the math is simple: the larger the pool of desperate applicants, the higher the daily take.
Taliban officials boast that 1,800 workers will be sent to Qatar in 23 “specialized” trades ranging from electrical engineering and EV repair to hotel services, dairy production, and driving. But the outcome of the last recruitment drive has never been disclosed. For many Afghanistanis, the silence is proof enough that the program is less about jobs and more about monetizing desperation. Residents in Kabul and beyond accuse the Taliban of weaponizing unemployment as a revenue stream, converting the public’s hope for work abroad into a lucrative cash extraction system. Sources inside the capital estimate that this single scheme may be generating millions of kabuli rupees each month, all without transparency or independent oversight.
Economic observers warn that such predatory practices not only deepen public mistrust but also exacerbate psychological strain in a country where economic collapse, food insecurity, and the dismantling of women’s participation in the workforce have already driven millions to the edge. The Qatar labor program, critics say, has become emblematic of Taliban governance a system built on the commercialization of hardship, where the promise of opportunity exists primarily as bait for the next round of collection.
