Afghanistan Peace CampaignThe Washington Post
August 30, 2025
Four years after the evacuation of Afghanistan, U.S. engagement could help combat terrorism and hunger.
The United States lost its longest war four years ago. Saturday marks the anniversary of the ignominious end to two decades in Afghanistan. A suicide bombing during the pullout killed 13 U.S. troops. America abandoned countless allies and billions of dollars in military hardware. President Joe Biden’s standing never recovered from the foreseeable and preventable disaster.
Just as the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021 invited comparisons to the fall of Saigon in April 1975, a related parallel is now worth considering. The departure of the last American helicopters from Vietnam 50 years ago brought a long period of diplomatic isolation and an economic embargo against the victorious Communist government in Vietnam. It took 20 years to establish diplomatic relations in 1995, when the U.S. opened its first liaison office in Hanoi. In the three decades that followed, Vietnam emerged as one of America’s most important trade and security partners in Southeast Asia — despite the country’s dire track record of internal repression.
It is still challenging to imagine the United States establishing formal diplomatic ties with the Taliban, a group that harbored Osama bin Laden and led an insurgency that killed more than 2,400 U.S. troops. The Treasury Department still lists the Taliban as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group. It is even harder to imagine Afghanistan becoming a strategic partner.
On the other hand, as President Donald Trump declared in May when he lifted sanctions on the Syrian government, the United States has no “permanent enemies.” According to that worldview, engaging with the Taliban is in the national interest. The alternative is to cede strategic influence to rivals while further abandoning the Afghan people who bought into promises that America would not cut and run.
The Taliban’s human rights record is abysmal. Their treatment of women and girls remains abhorrent. Girls and women are prohibited from pursuing an education beyond primary school and banned from most jobs. Former Afghan government officials and members of the U.S.-trained security forces continue to be hunted down and killed.
As with Vietnam and other countries with which the United States has profound differences, engagement has often proved more effective than isolation, particularly in areas of common interest.
The main concern is counterterrorism. The largest threat now is the Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, which was responsible for the August 2021 suicide bombing and operates mostly out of eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan. The Taliban and ISIS-K are sworn enemies, with the Islamic State offshoot seeing the country’s new rulers as insufficiently pure, or perhaps insufficiently brutal. ISIS-K carried out a concert siege in Moscow last year that left more than 140 dead and has been extending its reach into Europe, deftly using encrypted messaging apps and slickly produced videos for recruitment, while relying on cryptocurrencies to evade attempts to disrupt its financial networks. Engaging with the Taliban would allow for intelligence-sharing to disrupt ISIS-K command and control.
China and Pakistan have already held a series of trilateral talks with Afghanistan about fighting terrorism. China is interested in securing its 47-mile border with Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor to prevent infiltration by Uyghur militants into the neighboring Xinjiang region. So far, Russia is the only country to establish formal diplomatic relations with Afghanistan, but others have named ambassadors to the country, including China, Iran, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. A dozen other countries have missions led by a lower-level diplomat, including Turkey, India, Pakistan and the European Union. The U.S. need not cede that diplomatic ground.
Beyond strategic concerns, engaging the Taliban could facilitate the flow of humanitarian assistance. More than half the Afghan population needs help urgently. Most official U.S. aid was cut off this year, and the lack of American recognition of the government in Kabul, combined with sanctions, hampers the flow of other international aid to people in desperate need.
The United States is sitting on billions of dollars in frozen funds of the Afghanistan central bank, crippling the country’s banking system. The freeze is causing a liquidity crisis and a shortage of banknotes, deterring international investment. This gives Washington leverage.
There could also be cooperation on exploiting Afghanistan’s mineral deposits, which include potentially trillions of dollars in untapped reserves of rare earths as well as lithium, copper, iron and cobalt. The United States conducted extensive mapping during its 20-year military presence. Now, China is inking deals and reaping the benefits.
Finally, engaging the Taliban could also resolve the fate of missing Americans who are believed to still be held there.
The U.S. must be clear-eyed; engagement is unlikely to bring immediate change in the Taliban’s treatment of women or their barbaric use of sharia. But it could bolster more moderate factions within the Taliban. Recognition could be limited to start, with the carrot of full relations down the road.