Afghanistan Peace CampaignSecretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday designated Afghanistan as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” and urged the ruling Taliban to release two U.S. citizens he said are “unjustly detained.”
“Today, I am designating Afghanistan as a State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention. The Taliban continues to use terrorist tactics, kidnapping individuals for ransom or to seek policy concessions. These despicable tactics need to end,” Rubio said in a release.
“It is not safe for Americans to travel to Afghanistan because the Taliban continues to unjustly detain our fellow Americans and other foreign nationals,” he added.
Rubio also called on the Taliban to release Dennis Coyle, Mahmood Habibi and “all Americans unjustly detained in Afghanistan now and commit to cease the practice of hostage diplomacy forever.”
Coyle, 64, was detained in January of last year without charges by the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence, according to a website run by his family. At the time, Coyle was “legally working to support Afghan language communities as an academic researcher” and has still not been charged with a crime, his family said.
The State Department declared last June that Coyle was wrongfully detained.
“Dennis has been held in near-solitary conditions, requiring permission even to use the bathroom, and without access to adequate medical care,” Coyle’s family said. “His family is deeply concerned for his health and well-being. … Dennis’s elderly mother, Donna, and his three sisters—Amy, Patti, and Molly—miss him profoundly. This past year has been marked by absence and grief.”
In August of 2022, the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence abducted Habibi, an American citizen who was born in Afghanistan, and his driver from their vehicle in the capital of Kabul, according to the State Department.
Habibi, 38, was previously Afghanistan’s director of civil aviation and worked for the Kabul-based telecommunications company Asia Consultancy Group, according to the FBI. The bureau, which is seeking information regarding Habibi’s disappearance, notes that the Taliban detained 29 other employees of the company and has released all but Habibi and one other.
Habibi has not been heard from since his arrest, while the Taliban has not provided information on his whereabouts or condition, according to the State Department and FBI.
The Taliban retook power in Afghanistan in 2021, upon the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from the country after two decades of war under Trump and former presidents Bush, Obama and Biden.
The conflict, the longest in American history, cost $2.3 trillion, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University. That initiative also determined 2,324 U.S. service members, 3,917 U.S. contractors, 1,144 allied troops and 46,319 civilians died in the war.
The cost of caring for veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will reach between $2.2 trillion and $2.5 trillion by 2050, according to the project.
Meanwhile, the Taliban has no “political or armed opposition that represent a serious threat to the group or its authoritarian rule” and places “severe restrictions” on Afghan women and girls, according to a March 2025 report from the Congressional Research Service.