Nearly a year after the last U.S. troops flew out of Kabul international airport, the United States remains in contact with the Taliban.
Fortunately, that engagement doesn’t involve tens of thousands of Americans on the ground and tens of billions of taxpayer dollars pouring into a country incapable of effectively using it.
The Biden administration has maintained an open line of communication with the Taliban ever since the U.S. ended its two-decade-long war in the country. U.S. and Taliban officials have met on multiple occasions, usually in Qatar, to try to figure out how to create a working relationship that meets the basic objectives of both sides. For the U.S., this is centered principally on ensuring a Taliban-run Afghanistan doesn’t degenerate into an open sewer for terrorist organizations. For the Taliban, the name of the game is convincing Washington to drop the sanctions on its leadership and release the approximately $9 billion in frozen foreign reserves forthwith, and if possible, attaining official normalization from the Americans. While U.S. and Taliban positions are not totally in conflict, there are enough differences between them to cause turbulence in the 11-month dialogue. Both sides have their grievances, and neither appears ready to compromise on them.
The Biden administration remains extremely concerned with how the Taliban have governed Afghanistan since capturing Kabul. U.S. officials fault the Taliban for repressing women with draconian social measures, committing human rights violations against its opponents, and neglecting to include former opponents in the new government. The U.S. postponed dialogue with the Taliban for three months in March, when the Taliban backtracked on a pledge to allow women to pursue secondary education.
Washington is also highly resistant to allowing the Taliban government to access the billions of dollars in Afghan foreign reserves currently locked up in U.S. banks. The U.S. has been trying to find a middle ground ever since, proposing a third-party mechanism that would allow the Afghan people to be the beneficiaries of these desperately needed funds, but without the money seeping into the Taliban’s coffers. Needless to say, it’s a tough line to draw, given the Taliban’s consolidation of power is well in hand.
Meanwhile, the Taliban remain convinced that Afghanistan wouldn’t be in such a horrific economic and humanitarian crisis (nearly 60% of the Afghan population is in need of humanitarian assistance, over 22 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and the Afghan economy lost about a third of its value in less than two years) if the U.S. removed restrictions that would allow the Afghan banking system to function. The Taliban leadership sees no reason to reform politically or compromise with the very people it defeated on the battlefield. Given the lack of a nationally viable armed resistance against Taliban rule, it’s not hard to grasp why.
But the fact that U.S. and Taliban officials continue to talk about these issues is itself a small victory.
Thomas West, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, sat down with the Taliban on Wednesday, July 27 to discuss “macroeconomic stability issues,” code for stabilizing an Afghan economy falling apart at the seams. One way to increase the odds of success here (or at least prevent an even more disastrous economic situation) is to implement the executive order President Joe Biden issued back in February, which makes $3.5 billion in Afghan foreign reserves available for distribution to address the Afghan people’s needs. The U.S. and the Taliban are reportedly exchanging proposals on how best to do that, with Washington insisting on international supervision of how the money can be spent.
True, news about Afghanistan is no longer taking up space on newspaper front pages, but there is activity behind the scenes. Fortunately, an expensive, fruitless occupation is not part of it.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
