Press Release
Afghanistan’s Mineral Reserves are the Public Properties of Muslims and Must Be Managed According to Shariah, Not Political Expediencies or Personal Interests!
(Translated)

In recent months, both overt and covert meetings have taken place between officials of the current regime and representatives of the United States, China, Russia, and certain regional countries. One of the main themes of these meetings has been Afghanistan’s strategic mines and rare earth elements – resources toward which global powers have shown particular interest. These countries seek to gain control of these mines in return for political or economic concessions to the ruling regime.

The Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir / Wilayah Afghanistan shares its deep concern over the non-Islamic and economically flawed management of the mines with both the responsible authorities and the Afghan people, and warns of the grave worldly and eternal consequences of mismanaging public resources.

Over the past three and a half years, the current regime of Afghanistan—without any strategic planning, without thorough deep economic analysis, and without formulating a transparent legal mechanism based on Islam—has signed contracts of more than 200 medium and large mines, including hundreds of smaller ones, with both local and foreign individuals and companies. These contracts not only lack the necessary transparency, but are mostly tailored to serve personal gains and specific elite circles. In some cases, the mineral resources contracts have even been granted to individuals based on unofficial directives from high-ranking officials. What is evident in practice is that we unfortunately witness a mass looting of public properties — as if there is an unofficially unannounced competition underway between senior government officials and foreign companies to grab hold of Afghanistan’s mineral resources.

On the other side, privatization of major mines is in contradiction with Islamic rulings. Since large mineral resources are classified as public property in Islam, privatizing them or handing them over to hostile disbelievers or companies affiliated with them is not only impermissible from Sharia perspective, but is also seen as a grave political and strategic mistake. Particularly, handing them over to those whose hostility to the Islamic Ummah is explicit—such as China, which systematically suppresses Uyghur Muslims in East Turkestan—is a clear instance of cooperating with oppressors, about which Allah (swt) has issued a decisive warning:

[وَلَا تَرْكَنُوا إِلَى الَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا فَتَمَسَّكُمُ النَّارُ]

“And do not incline toward those who do wrong, lest the Fire touch you…” [Hud: 113].

Today, many companies that have entered Afghanistan under the guise of mining operations may appear to be business-oriented in nature, but in many instances, they are affiliated with the intelligence and political agencies of colonial powers, whose true objective is soft penetration and gradual domination over Afghanistan’s mineral resources. Therefore, the Islamic state’s duty with regard to mines is to safeguard, maintain, and manage them as a trustee on behalf of the people, not to treat them as personal property to be seized or handed over to the private sector. Privatizing these resources concentrates them in the hands of a small wealthy elite, which is not only unjust to the people, but also contradicts the blessed Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (saw), who said: «الْمُسْلِمُونَ شُرَكَاءُ فِي ثَلَاثٍ: الْمَاءِ وَالْكَلَأِ وَالنَّارِ»“The Muslims are partners in three things: water, pasture, and fire.” (Narrated by Ahmad)

Finally, we emphasize that the country’s mineral resources must serve a strategic economic vision for the industrialization of an Islamic State—not be sold in raw form for short-term revenues or to finance ordinary and development budgets. The realization of this vision is only possible under a state that truly adheres to Shariah in practice, not merely in slogans.

Such a state is the Rightly-Guided Caliphate (Khilafah Rashidah) upon the method of the Prophethood—a system whose Islamic responsibility is not to dominate the Ummah’s wealth, but to safeguard it, ensure its just distribution, and utilize it for preparation, industrial development, and the collective welfare of the Islamic Ummah.

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Afghanistan