A Chinese company has signed an oil extraction deal with Afghanistan’s Taliban

The ruling Taliban has signed a deal with a Chinese company to extract oil from northern Afghanistan’s Amu Darya basin as the radical Islamist group attempts to bolster the South Asian nation’s increasingly impoverished and isolated economy.

The agreement with China’s Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co is the first major international energy extraction deal the Taliban has signed since taking control of Afghanistan in 2021.