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.The contract was signed in Kabul in the presence of Taliban’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan, Wang Yu, according to a statement from the Taliban government.In December, the UN suspended some of its “time-critical” programs in Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban’s ban on female NGO workers.The Taliban last month also suspended university education for all female students in Afghanistan, drawing condemnation from around the world."