The Economist - USA (2022-06-11)

38 Asia TheEconomistJune11th 2022

where  Taliban  fighters  extorted  fees  from

truckers moving food and fuel. 

Second,  the  Taliban  have  kept  official

revenues  flowing.  A  handful  of  holdovers

from the former government are maintain­

ing  sophisticated  financial­management

software  set  up  by  the  American­backed

regime to run their revenue­collection sys­

tems. The group has also cracked down on

graft, a serious problem under the previous

government.  A  recent  World  Bank  survey

found  that  few  private­sector  businesses

have  been  asked  to  make  unofficial  pay­

ments when filing taxes or clearing goods

through  customs  since  August,  whereas

such demands used to be common. 

Khalid  Payenda,  who  was  the  last  fi­

nance minister under the previous govern­

ment, recalls staging surprise inspections

at customs posts. In Kandahar, his inspec­

tors  found  officials  turning  a  blind  eye  as

dismantled  cars  were  brought  in  from

abroad  and  assembled  near  the  customs

office,  dodging  hefty  duties  on  imported

vehicles.  Mr  Payenda,  who  now  lives  in

Washington, dc, reckons the Taliban could

easily  double  revenues  from  customs,

which  came  to  $400m  in  2020,  if  they

eliminate that sort of graft. 

The  Taliban  plan  to  spend  $2.6bn  this

year,  though  they  have  not  published  de­

tails  of  where  that  money  will  go  or  how

they will make up the $500m shortfall be­

tween  their  outlays  and  their  own  projec­

tions of revenues. One hint comes from an

interim budget covering the three months

to  March,  in  which  the  Taliban  said  they

would devote about 40% of total spending

to defence and security. This financial year,

that share is expected to rise to 50%, a stag­

gering sum given that the government fac­

es  no  existential  threats  and  at  least  half

the  country’s  population  is  living  on  less

than $1.90 a day.

Analysts  are  left  wondering  what  the

defence budget will be spent on. Will it be

used  against  the  local  branch  of  Islamic

State,  which  has  staged  bloody  attacks  in

the  east  of  the  country?  Or  to  take  on  the

anti­Taliban  resistance  in  the  north?  The

most likely answer is that much of it will be

used to pay the thousands of fighters who

worked  for  the  Taliban  before  August,

mostly young men who might rebel if their

income is suddenly cut off.

Whatever the answer, the result will be

less  money  to  feed  hungry  citizens,  let

alone pay for health care, education or re­

building the economy. That means that al­

ready  reluctant  foreign  donors  will  be

forced  to  step  in  to  keep  Afghans  from

starving. Earlier this year the unlaunched

its largest­ever appeal for a single country,

hoping  to  raise  $4.4bn  in  emergency  aid.

But  donor  fatigue,  aversion  to  the  Taliban

and  the  diversion  of  resources  to  Ukraine

mean  that  only  about  a  third  of  that  has

been raised so far. 

The Talibanare nothelpinginterna­

tionalfundraisingefforts.Theyhavebro­

kentheirpromisetoletgirlsbackintosec­

ondaryschoolsandhaveshutwomenout

ofpubliclife.Evenastheyannouncedthe

budgetlastmonth,authorities dissolved

theHumanRightsCommission.TheTali­

banhavesurprisedtheworldbyshowing

theycancontinuetoraisemoneytorun

thestate.Buttheyhaveyettoshowthey

canspendit wisely. n

Putting the fund in fundamentalist

Afghanistan, government revenue, $bn

Source:WorldBank *Forecast

6 5 4 3 2 1 0

22 222*

Use of reserves

Debt

Customs duties & fees

Non-tax revenues

Tax revenues

Grants

Industrialdisasters

Terminal

containers

W

henafirebrokeoutatthebmIn­

land Container Depot in Bangladesh

on  June  4th  Oliur  Rahman  Nayan,  a  local

worker,  did  what  many  young  people

would do: he took out his phone and start­

ed recording. Thousands watched his live­

stream as containers full of clothes headed

to the nearby port of Chattogram (formerly

Chittagong),  and  then  to  Western  high

streets,  went  up  in  smoke.  They  followed

along  as  firefighters  tried  to  douse  the

flames. Then the screen went black. 

Mr Nayan was dead, engulfed in an ex­

plosion  that  shook  buildings  miles  away.

More  than  40  others,  including  nine  fire­

fighters,  perished.  Hundreds  more  were

injured in the blaze. Many details are still

unknown,  but  the  picture  emerging  is

painfully  familiar  in  Bangladesh,  where

rapid  industrial  growth  has  been  marred

by periodic industrial accidents. 

Days  before  the  blast  some  850  tonnes

of hydrogen peroxide, a volatile chemical,

were brought from a nearby plant to the de­

pot, which does not seem to have had any

special  safety  procedures  for  hazardous

materials. Containers full of the stuff were

left in the yard alongside other cargo, rath­

er than in a separate shed, as they awaited

shipment  to  Cambodia,  according  to  the

Business Standard,  a  Bangladeshi  newspa­

per.  The  explosion  occurred  when  a  fire,

whose cause is unclear, reached these con­

tainers, one of which was leaking. 

The  owners  of  the  plant  that  produced

the chemicals are Mostafizur and Mujibur

Rahman.  They  are  also  majority  share­

holders of Smart Group, the container de­

pot’s parent company. The fire service has

accused them and their business partner of

failing  to  warn  it  about  the  stockpile  of

chemicals.  (The  Rahman  brothers  did  not

respond  to  requests  for  comment.)  Un­

aware of the added hazard, the firefighters

doused  the  flames  with  water—the  oppo­

site  of  what  they  would  have  done  if  they

had  known  about  the  hydrogen  peroxide,

says Monir Hossain, the assistant director

of the national fire service. The containers,

he  says,  were  either  unlabelled  or  misla­

belled. On June 7th police charged the de­

pot’s  executives  with  manslaughter  and

negligence, but not the Rahman brothers.

It  took  days  to  put  out  the  blaze.  Local

volunteers  helped  until  the  army  stepped

in. Anisur Rahman, a worker at the depot,

turned  up  for  his  shift  on  Sunday  and

found  himself  dragging  burnt  corpses

from  the  rubble.  “I  have  recovered  seven

bodies since morning,” he told The Econo-

mistthat evening.

Authorities  say  the  depot  did  not  have

permission to store the chemicals. An offi­

cial at the bmcontainer depot denies this,

saying they did have a storage licence, but

admits there was “mismanagement” in the

handling of the goods. 

Such  accidents  are  not  new  in  Bangla­

desh.  Last  year  more  than  52  people  were

killed in a fire at a food­processing factory.

The  textile  industry,  which  has  helped

make  Bangladesh  one  of  Asia’s  fastest­

growing  economies,  has  a  particularly

spotty  record.  More  than  1,100  workers

died when Rana Plaza, an eight­storey gar­

ment factory on the edge of Dhaka, the cap­

ital,  collapsed  in  2013.  Western  retailers

whose  clothes  were  being  made  in  the

building  at  the  time  scrambled  to  offer

compensation  to  families  and  introduce

new health­and­safety measures.

But  improvements  have  been  piece­

meal, says Taqbir Huda, a lawyer from Jus­

tice  for  All  Now  Bangladesh,  an  advocacy

group.  The  blast  in  Chattogram  is  surely

tragedy enough to push more sweeping re­

forms, he says. Not all Bangladeshis share

his optimism. Abdu Sattar lives just behind

the depot: the air around him is still heavy

with the smell of chemicals and the water

his  family  drinks  may  well  be  polluted.

too. “Everyone knows that chemicals were

kept  here,”  he  says.  Itmaybe  against  the

rules  but  in  Bangladesh,hesays,  “money

can change everything.”n

Bangladesh’s patchy safety record looks

even worse after yet another accident