“China will be moving in. There are rare earth minerals in [Afghanistan]. I don’t know why we didn’t work with the Afghans to develop that, but we never did,” McCaul  told the Washington Post.

“And now, you’re going to have China going in mining these rare earth minerals," he told the newspaper as quoted by Sputnik.

McCaul said that as a result, China is the winner and the United States the loser in this situation as are the Afghan people.

"[T]he Taliban* will have a huge windfall profit from this that they’ll put into terrorist financing,” he added.

After months of clashes between the government forces and the insurgents, Taliban forces captured Afghanistan after entering Kabul on Sunday.

President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as Taliban insurgents entered Kabul.