During the only presidential debate, president-elect Donald Trump spoke of how he had repeated conversations when he was last president of the United States with a Taliban leader whom he identified only as Abdul.

It was during his last rule that his administration, led by Zalmay Khalilzad, negotiated the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan aimed at ending America’s longest war. The Taliban leader Trump was referring to in his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Mullah Baradar is currently a vice president in Afghanistan’s de facto Taliban government.

While Afghanistan might not be high on President-elect Trump’s agenda, there may be an opportunity to at least explore ways that would allow the United States to return to Afghanistan, without giving diplomatic recognition to the Taliban.

I also recognize how deeply polarized the political landscape is in America but after 20 years, tens of thousands of Afghans dead, and promises of a better day unfulfilled, Afghanistan deserves a sincere look at how the United States might be able to support its 40 million people from inside Afghanistan and it matters not who is the president, but if he can help.

Afghanistan, like most countries, looks different from a distance. In Afghanistan women are working in the education and health ministries and edicts are not always implemented immediately or in letter. There are women- run businesses and people, including men, working quietly to build strong connections among like minded people. They might not be people whose names are recognizable outside Afghanistan, or even inside Kabul, but they are there and they are trying.

Afghanistan becoming more restrictive

But it is not good in Afghanistan, girls are not in school beyond Grade 6 and restrictions against women are piling up. Edicts are becoming more frequent and more regressive.

Still there might be an opening. The current U.S. policy of isolation has been an abysmal failure. Having the U.S. Embassy Kabul in Doha meeting folks who can come to them has been ineffective.

Three years into the Taliban’s rule, Afghanistan is increasingly restrictive, with a relentless succession of edicts issued and most directed against women and girls.

Militant groups are proliferating at an alarming rate. The last U.N. report on Afghanistan named scores of militant groups setting up house in Afghanistan, destabilizing an already fragile region. Well known among them is the Islamic State and the Tehrik -e-Taliban Pakistan as well as scores of lesser known militant groups. These groups are populated by militants with a grudge against China, Pakistan, the United States, Russia and India.

The border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan is increasingly deadly with near weekly and sometimes daily attacks on Pakistan security forces and occasionally attacks targeting a burgeoning Chinese workforce in Pakistan.

Taliban leader Akhunzada tightening grip

Washington’s policy of isolation is not new in Afghanistan and even though it failed in the past, they are sticking to it today, even as it loses ground with each new edict.

The United States isolated the Taliban when they were last in power between 1996-2001, pushing the United Nations to sanction them, while threatening them if they did not give up Osama Bin Laden, educate girls and close training camps. It failed. It also contributed to the 9/11 attacks against the United States as militants found a safe haven to plot, while offering money and allegiance to a Taliban government that had no allies.

But it also sidelined those within the Taliban who could have been allies to the United States, those who did not want foreign fighters in their country, and wanted to educate girls. Afghanistan is a conservative country and yes their idea of education fell within their Islamic traditions of segregation, and hijab, but they understood the need for educated women, who could be doctors and teachers and contribute to their society.

But then, like now, those Taliban voices were silenced. Then they were unable to rally like-minded people within the movement because a deepening isolation only fueled increased resentment of the west and any concessions were eventually seen as exchanging their traditions for western ones.

Frustratingly the same is occurring today in Afghanistan, hurting those who would seek to engage, isolating them, making their desire for greater engagement, even for opening schools to girls, seen as betraying their Islamic ideals.

Until now the U.S. policy of isolation has worsened the situation in Afghanistan, giving strength to those within the Taliban leadership who see isolation as a means to tighten their control, to market western demands as threats against Islam, and weaken those who would seek to engage.

Afghans are not opposed to educating their girls. In March 2022 the Taliban were ready to open schools, staying within the country’s conservative traditions, even ensuring in places where they did not have a female teacher, an elderly male teacher was standing ready to take the classes.

But it was the Taliban leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada, who at the 11th hour rescinded approval closing a door that may have led to the eventual return of western embassies to Kabul. It may also have led to eventual diplomatic recognition.

Perhaps Akhundzada’s 11th hour decision was meant to do just what it did – scuttle any opening the U.S. or its allies might have had to return to Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban’s return in 2021, Akhunzada has gradually been implementing the same uncompromising rule practiced by the Taliban’s founder Mullah Mohammad Omar during their first rule.

Perhaps Akhundzada is seeking to become another Mullah Omar. Because the U.S. was not in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s first rule they wouldn’t understand the absolute control Mullah Omar wielded, all in the name of Islam. I was there. Mullah Omar’s rule was ironclad. He was never defied. His rule was absolute. In 1996, when the Taliban took power, he cemented his rule in the name of Islam by taking from its sacred shrine in southern Kandahar the purported cloak of Islam’s prophet, Mohammad. 

Need to engage Taliban moderates

While I accept subtlety is not a characteristic of President-elect Trump, perhaps there is an opening to find a way to engage with those with whom his administration spent two years negotiating. I don’t say Trump calls up Mullah Baradar, or Abdul, as he calls him, but perhaps he does. Perhaps there is a way to find a more workable policy, to aid those who need strengthening within the Taliban, without compromising them.

I don’t know if this new administration will come up with a better policy, but they need to try because the current one isn’t working.

Ignoring Afghanistan as some have suggested is not the answer. That strategy paid deadly dividends the last time it was tried and there are plenty of warning signs that it could again.

(The author is a former correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Pakistan and Afghanistan and a member of the Sapan News Advisory Council. She has covered the region for three decades. By special arrangement with Sapan in collaboration with Kathy Gannon’s Substack)