Over the course of the last few days I’ve been developing a criminal profile to try to explain what happened with the pullout from Afghanistan. A criminal profile should not be considered a statement of fact, but merely an outline to help guide investigators by presenting what appears to be a most likely scenario describing a course of events. In the case of Afghanistan, the bizarre series of events that led to the Taliban’s rout of the Afghan Defense Forces may have begun with Vladimir Putin wanting to gain access to rare earth minerals mining rights in the Afghan countryside.

Afghanistan is currently estimated to sit on rare earth metal deposits that may be worth in excess of one-trillion US Dollars.  Those materials are highly valuable for computer and robotics development, and nations are vying for access to Afghanistan’s riches. Russia has a history of seeking economic development partnerships with Afghanistan, but even though Donald Trump pushed Afghanistan to open the country up for mining during the US occupation, there was no way that the Russians could convince the Afghans to grant any exclusive mining rights to Polymetals International, a mining company launched in St. Petersburg Russia, headquartered in Cyprus, listed on the London Stock Exchange, and whose chief shareholders are a cabal of Russian oligarchs who have close ties to Vladimir Putin.

It appears that Putin, frustrated over his inability to gain control over mining rights in Afghanistan may have gone to the Taliban and told them that he has control over Trump, and that he could make US forces leave Afghanistan, if they would grant exclusive rare earth mining rights to Russian companies like Polymetals International. When the Taliban asked for proof that he really had control over the White House, Putin ordered Trump to initiate “peace talks” with the Taliban, which resulted in the release of 5000 Taliban fighters, who later participated in the recent siege of Kabul. Putin could have achieved this goal easily by offering to forgive several of the loans that Trump has outstanding with Russian banks. Impressed by this show of authority over the United States, the Taliban agreed to the deal. After Taliban forces over-ran Kabul, they demonstrated their respect for their deal with Putin by guarding the Russian embassy, to make sure that no Taliban youth started looting the property.

The Taliban have proven themselves to be savvy students of information warfare and military strategy. It appears that someone in the Taliban leadership fits the traditional profile of a “warrior monk” who has studied key military texts and is well aware of the lessons of Sun-Tzu and Machiavelli. It’s also entirely possible that in his readings that letter came across Erik Hoffer’s comment about Kemal Ataturk using nationalism as a means of modernizing Turkey, and started thinking that with Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth, it’s not acceptable that Russia should be able to enjoy massive profits from mining ventures while the majority of the Afghan people continue to live a backward existence.

The Achilles heel of the Taliban is their history of brutal and graphic violence. A country that is well versed in information warfare tactics could compromise the Taliban by creating videos and online messaging campaigns claiming to show the brutal rape and mutilation of Shia Muslim women and children, and the massacre of men in towns along the Iran/Afghan border. That insult to Shia Islam could draw Iran into conflicts with the Taliban. It’s also possible to foment a confrontation with the Chinese by creating videos claiming to show Taliban fighters engaging in training exercises on the Chinese side of the China/Afghan border.

The way that the Taliban would seek to limit their exposure to those kinds of attacks would be to curb the violence of their most volatile young supporters. This is similar to how when Hitler came to power, he engineered a purge to eliminate those members of the Nazi SD who were too violent and mentally unstable to be integrated into the more “polished” Nazi SS. The fact that the Taliban are encouraging towns and cities to open up and “return to business” should not be taken as an indication that the group is reformed and now against violence, but an indication that they’ve gone from being a bunch of Nazi SD style brawlers and thugs, to an attempt to try to become sharpy dressed high functioning sociopaths, more like the Nazi SS.

It is painfully naive to imagine that a bunch of religious fundamentalists have become enlightened and decided that they now respect women. It is not at all far-fetched to imagine that a handful of those religious fundamentalists have studied the arts of war and propaganda, and decided that they want to be able to enjoy the benefits that come from massive financial wealth. If the criminal profile regarding Russia described above is accurate, then it will be interesting to watch how the Taliban leadership responds to Russia’s efforts to begin developing rare earth mines in the nation’s countryside, and how long they allow that development to continue before they begin nationalizing mines and equipment, and declare the wealth from those developments belongs to the Taliban leadership. It will also be interesting to see how that wealth is shared, and whether the group is ultimately torn apart by in-fighting as a combination of brutal purges of the Taliban’s most violent and unstable members, and the accumulation of vast wealth by the group’s leadership sparks internal conflicts.