Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment his Department has made of the existence of links between the Taliban and Islamic State movements in Afghanistan and the abusive exploitation of extractive resources.

We assess that the Afghan Taliban leadership opposes Daesh's presence in Afghanistan, where there has been reported fighting between the two groups. Our judgement is that the Taliban generate funding via illegal exploitation of Afghanistan's natural resources, for example marble, talcum and lapis lazuli, and through extortion of payments from legal mining operations, but we have seen no evidence to suggest that Daesh is currently engaged in these activities.