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11 July 2024

Is it time for the US to recognize the Taliban?

GIORGIO CAFIERO

Late last month, roughly two dozen countries sent envoys to Qatar for a conference about international engagement with Afghanistan and for the first time the Taliban participated too.

Taliban representatives attended the latest round of the “Doha process” because, unlike the May 2023 gathering, activists were not in attendance this time around. This conference gave the Taliban the chance to call on the U.S. and other western governments to lift economic sanctions on Afghanistan and build deeper ties with the Islamist regime in Kabul.

That diplomats from these roughly two dozen countries and Taliban officials attended this recent conference speaks to the fact that more states are engaging the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), even if no government has officially recognized the Taliban since it reconquered the country in August 2021.

Most of Afghanistan’s immediate neighbors and a host of non-western, Muslim-majority countries along with China and Russia have essentially informally recognized the Taliban and stepped up outreach to the IEA to further their own economic, trade, and security interests.

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