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According to a recent report for the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, American intelligence agencies continue to believe that donations from wealthy sympathizers in the Gulf make up the bulk of funding for the Taliban, al Qaeda and other extremist groups operating along the AfPak (Afghanistan/Pakistan) frontier.

An examination of their day-to-day activities at the ground level suggests otherwise however. Whether protecting the opium trade, engaging in kidnapping, bank robbery, gunrunning, extortion or human trafficking, takfiri groups on both sides of the frontier today behave more like Mafiosi than mujahidin.

It's hard to make generalizations about the wider AfPak insurgency because there are so many different anti-state groups operating on both sides of the Durrand Line, and they do not always behave the same way. There continue to be reports of extremist leaders asking for - and receiving - cash donations from sympathetic members of the community.

But increasingly, AfPak anti-state groups appear to expend a significant amount of their daily energy engaging in criminal fund-raising techniques, and this involvement in crime is changing both their battlefield strategy and the fundamental nature of the wider insurgency.

The morphing of the AfPak insurgents is neither new nor unique: throughout history and around the world insurgents and terror groups have repeatedly turned to crime to support their activities. And over time criminal earnings have corrupted levels of dedication to the original ideology. The FARC, the IRA and Hezbollah have undergone similar metamorphoses, and perhaps the most famous case from history is the Sicilian Mafia, which got it start much like the Taliban - protecting an ethnic community from the excesses of local rulers.

In southern and southwestern Afghanistan, where the Taliban protect and tax the multi-billion-dollar opium market, insurgents have deepened their involvement in the trade since 2001.

Initially, Taliban commanders mainly confined themselves to taxing drug shipments that moved through their control zones, and later began providing protection for opium shipments and heroin refineries. It's now common to hear of Taliban commanders running their own refineries, which have exploded in number inside insurgent-held territory.

There is also increased evidence that some Afghan Taliban commanders continue to control drug shipments as they leave Afghan territory, indicating the movement is widening its sphere of criminal influence.

Although Taliban commanders have integrated their activities throughout the opium trade, it's still not accurate to suggest the Taliban control the drug market. Drug cartels, which are mainly based in Pakistan and dependent on ties both to anti-state and state actors, remain the key decision-makers and earn the greatest profits.

And while it's clear that growing numbers of Taliban commanders are in it mainly for the money, it would also be wrong to conclude that the movement as a whole has abandoned its goal of driving Western forces out of Afghanistan. Rather it is more accurate to say a small core of true believers still command the Afghan Taliban, and there is scant evidence those leaders live lavishly off the profits they earn from protecting and taxing the drugs trade.

Continue reading the full article in NATO Review.

Gretchen Peters spent over a decade as a reporter covering Afghanistan and Pakistan. She has written extensively about the link between drugs and the insurgency in Afghanistan and is the author of 'Seeds of Terror.'

For more NATO Review articles on terrorists and organized crime click here.

In addition, the NATO channel has produced this short video about the effects of the drug trade in Afghanistan on the people, the government and the insurgency.