What the West can do now in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan

The country is suffering a humanitarian crisis that will deepen if US aid is halted permanently. And turning the country into a pariah state will serve no nation’s interest.

Expert comment Published 5 February 2025 4 minute READ

Hameed Hakimi

Associate Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme and Europe Programme

Following the re-election of President Donald Trump in November last year, Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership expressed hopes of opening ‘a new chapter’ in relations with the US. Afghanistan has not featured strongly in the Trump administration’s policy announcements – but the signs so far are not promising.

In the final hours of the Biden presidency, the Taliban exchanged two American citizens for a Taliban member jailed in the US. But the new Trump administration has already taken a much more aggressive stance: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said bounties could be placed on Taliban leaders to force the release of any remaining US hostages. Meanwhile, Trump has talked about retrieving weapons left behind during America’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan (a demand that Taliban spokesmen have dismissed). The 90-day halting of US international aid is already impacting humanitarian efforts in the country.

The US government has remained the biggest aid donor by far even since its military withdrawal, providing $3.63 billion between October 2021 and December 2024. If Trump’s ‘America First’ policies lead to a permanent halt of assistance, it will undoubtedly deepen Afghanistan’s multi-layered humanitarian crises. 

Over half of Afghanistan’s estimated 40 million population, nearly 23 million people, is projected to require humanitarian assistance in 2025. Disengaging with Afghanistan threatens to push the country towards pariah status – a situation that US and Western policymakers should seek to avoid at all costs.

Taliban’s stuttering internal cohesion

Since sweeping to power in August 2021, the regime in Kabul has struggled to gain international legitimacy. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the Taliban refers to its government, is an anomalous state. There is no discernible vision among the old senior Taliban leaders for statecraft beyond their broad claims of establishing a Shariah system – an abstract term itself. The Emirate has embraced the administrative system of the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which it fought and considered ‘un-Islamic’.

Internationally, Taliban leaders present their grip on power as evidence of successful governance, deserving formal recognition.

Taliban leaders are split on critical policy matters, including the cruel restrictions on women’s education and their societal role: The ICC prosecutor is seeking an arrest warrant for the Taliban’s supreme leader for discrimination against women and girls, piling international pressure on the issue. Evidence is also emerging of a growing rift between the Kabul-based Taliban leaders and elements spearheaded by the Taliban’s Kandahar-based amir, Haibatullah Akhundzada.

Beyond these anomalies, however, the Taliban regime is firmly in power. Major violent attacks from the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the group that attacked Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in March 2024, have thus far not succeeded in challenging the Taliban’s decisive territorial control. Internationally, Taliban leaders present their grip on power as evidence of successful governance, deserving formal recognition.

Despite the Taliban’s persistence, no country formally recognizes the regime in Kabul. Western governments have provided humanitarian aid while refusing a political track to formal recognition.

Taliban’s foreign relations: achievements but no victories

Unsurprisingly, Taliban leaders have been forging relations with neighbours. In September 2024, the Taliban’s foreign ministry claimed it had dispatched diplomats to 11 countries. Among others, the Taliban enjoys warm relations with Russia, Uzbekistan, Iran, Turkey , UAE, Qatar, and – increasingly – India.

India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, met Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, in Dubai last month, marking New Delhi’s highest level of engagement since the former Islamic Republic collapsed in August 2021. 

While it is inconceivable that Delhi would offer formal recognition to the Taliban, the dialogue demonstrates the Taliban’s ability to establish communication with important regional countries that once viewed the group with disdain.

In January 2025, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Arghchi, also visited Kabul to meet with Taliban leaders – the first visit by an Iranian foreign minister in eight years. Iran wants to ensure that the Taliban continues to implement the 1973 Helmand River water treaty and that Tehran does not face impediments in deporting Afghan refugees. Since March 2024, Iran has deported over a million Afghan refugees to Afghanistan. Such forced returns from Pakistan and Iran worsen the gloomy humanitarian picture.

Cross-border tensions with Pakistan

Relations with Pakistan, until recently the Taliban’s strongest ally, have soured, as Pakistan has suffered a spike in attacks on civilians and security personnel. There were 2,500 fatalities from over 440 attacks in 2024 that Islamabad blames on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or the so-called Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan accuses the Taliban in Afghanistan of harbouring TTP leaders, while the Taliban government insists that Islamabad must address its own internal security issues domestically.

Landlocked and underdeveloped, Afghanistan relies heavily on Pakistan for transit and trade routes, while millions of Afghan refugees continue to reside across Pakistani cities.

In December 2024, Pakistani military jets struck Afghanistan’s Paktia province, claiming to target TTP hideouts. But Taliban officials claimed nearly 50 civilians were killed in the attack, including women and children.

Deteriorating relations with Islamabad are a problem for both countries: Afghanistan-Pakistan relations represent a case of interdependence rather than asymmetry. Landlocked and underdeveloped, Afghanistan relies heavily on Pakistan for transit and trade routes, while millions of Afghan refugees continue to reside across Pakistani cities.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s future prosperity hinges on achieving security: the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Pakistan’s development plans, was initiated in 2015 but has been impeded by growing militant attacks.

The virtue of perseverance

The Taliban has exerted considerable effort to seek alternative partners in the region, such as China, to fill the economic and legitimacy void left by the West’s departure.

Engaging meaningfully with Afghanistan aligns with Europe’s and the US’s immediate and long-term interests.

But countries in the region have not provided the transformative economic investments Afghanistan needs. So, the Taliban remains keen on engaging with the West, especially the US.  It is not clear yet whether forging closer ties with Beijing and Moscow will attract Washington’s fury.

However, engaging meaningfully with Afghanistan aligns with Europe’s and the US’s immediate and long-term interests: to prevent further refugee and humanitarian crises; to ensure that IS-KP does not gain an operational foothold in the country to plan attacks against the West; and to promote regional economic integration that benefits Western interests. Afghanistan is rich in minerals and holds significant geostrategic importance, making it attractive to Beijing and other anti-Western capitals in the region.

No amount of aid, however, can sustain the Afghan population or provide an alternative to a functioning economy. Bringing Afghanistan out of isolation is imperative. The worse the situation in the country becomes, the more likely it is that violent non-state groups develop, and a cycle of deteriorating security develops in the country and the region. But engagement requires patient perseverance.

Western donor nations, even without an active US role, should work through regional communication channels to engage the Taliban. Partnering with regional hegemons, such as India, or countries well-equipped for mediation, such as Qatar, can open new horizons. The Taliban has instinctively rejected Western demands to attach conditions to aid. Thus, back-channel diplomacy with the mediation of regional states should be the starting point for engagement.

That should focus on long-term goals in Afghanistan and diffusing the Taliban perception that the West only seeks zero-sum outcomes. Self-interest motivates the region’s engagement with the Taliban. Western actors should adopt the same rationale, though resisting the temptation for quick fixes and achieving a liberal democratic system in the country.  

Aid conditionality and leveraging overt political tools against the Taliban are unlikely to produce immediate results. And the ICC warrants underline the difficulty of engaging on human rights with Afghanistan. But withdrawing aid from the country will strengthen the Taliban’s narrative of having defeated the West and will only punish ordinary Afghans who rely on international support.