Taliban profits as flights return to Afghan airspace after Iran missile attack

The number of international flights passing through Talibancontrolled Afghan airspace reached a record high this week in the aftermath of Iran's missile attack against Israel.

- ARPAN RAI

On Thursday, a record 191 flights passed over Afghanistan, with airlines paying the country’s civil aviation ministry $700 per flight for the privilege. The payments represent a significant and growing revenue stream for the cash-strapped Taliban regime.

Afghan airspace became off-limits to international flights amid safety fears around the time of the collapse of the Nato-allied government in August 2021, when Western militaries withdrew from Kabul and the hardline Islamist group seized control of the country.

But those planes have steadily been returning, particularly in the past year since the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza. In the second week of August, Afghanistan saw more than seven times the number of flights through its airspace compared to August 2023, data from FlightRadar24 showed.

And this shift accelerated dramatically earlier this week when Iran launched almost 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, forcing many more airlines to give up the usual route from Europe to Asia through Iranian airspace.

Data from FlightRadar24, analysed by The Independent, shows an average of 147 flights per day travelled through Afghan airspace between 19 and 30 September, not including journeys that start or finish in Afghanistan itself. The number spiked 20 per cent to 171 on Tuesday as Iran carried out its attack, beginning early in the morning, and jumped again to 191 on Thursday, the most flights to transit through Afghanistan on a single day since the Taliban takeover.