The Taliban’s top diplomat urged President Donald Trump to accept the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan and “engage” with it during a recent visit to Saudi Arabia, the Afghan outlet Tolo News reported on Monday.
“Foreign Affairs Minister” Amir Khan Muttaqi, in Jeddah to strengthen ties with the Saudi government despite its lack of formal recognition of the Taliban, reportedly threatened that any “insecurity” in Afghanistan would destabilize the entire world and indicated that the Taliban jihadist junta was America’s best bet for a stable, long-term partner in the country.
Muttaqi’s remarks are part of a greater campaign for the world to legitimize the Taliban, the jihadist terrorist organization that has governed Afghanistan uncontestedly for nearly four years. Taliban jihadists controlled the country for much of the 1990s until the post-September 11 American invasion in late 2001, after which they engaged in a two-decade-long insurgency against the legitimate, U.S.-backed government.
That government fell in August 2021 as a result of former President Joe Biden violating an agreement that Trump had signed with the group during his first term that would have seen the exit of American troops from the country on May 1 of that year; Biden announced an extension of the end of the war through September 2021. The Taliban responded to that violation by launching a pervasive terror campaign against the weak Afghan military, which collapsed. Then-President Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul almost immediately after Taliban terrorists reached the capital on August 15, 2021.
Dozens of women made a rare show of defiance against the brutal Taliban regime in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul on Wednesday, marching against the ban on beauty salons issued early this month by the extremist government. https://t.co/peWay29hY1
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) July 21, 2023
While no individuals or entities have challenged the Taliban’s full control of the country since the fall of Kabul, no countries have formally recognized the group, which calls itself the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” as the legitimate government of the country. Some nations, such as neighbors Iran and China, have accepted the Taliban as an “interim” governing body. Others, such as Russia, maintain diplomatic relations with the Taliban but, given their status as a recognized terrorist organization, cannot formalize those ties. Russia is expected to lift the Taliban’s terror designation this year.
The United States does not recognize the Afghan Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), though it does recognize the separate Pakistani Taliban as such and the Haqqani Network, a terror group that serves as a liaison between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Given that lack of designation, Taliban leaders have repeatedly encouraged Trump to legitimize the group.
“We told the Americans that no power can control Afghanistan without the support of its people,” Muttaqi, the top diplomat, reportedly said on Monday. “This truth must be acknowledged, and engagement with this government must take place.”
Muttaqi said that he had asked American officials who visited Kabul in March – with the objective of freeing American Taliban hostages – to engage the jihadists.
“If there is insecurity and internal conflict in Afghanistan, the whole region will face unrest,” he warned.
Muttaqi also used the opportunity to send a message to the Afghan diaspora that fears going home due to the Taliban’s notorious human rights abuses, asking them to come home. And to opponents of the Taliban at home, he advised, “for the sake of personal interests, don’t set the nation on fire.”
Tolo News observed that the Saudi government, which has not prominently featured coverage of Muttaqi’s visit in English-language state media, nonetheless gave the Taliban envoy a “warm welcome” despite not formally recognizing the group. The outlet suggested that stop was a “pivotal opportunity” for the Taliban to prove itself worthy of recognition as a respectable government.
https://twitter.com/BreitbartNews/status/1430374971138879490
President Trump maintained communication with the Taliban throughout his first term, though that communication was not always cordial. In 2022, Trump revealed a dramatic moment in which he sent Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar a photo of his home, implying he could easily bomb it.
“I sent him a picture of his house,” Trump told interviewer Sean Hannity. “He said, ‘But why do you send me a picture of my house?’ I said, ‘You’ll have to figure that one out.’”
Trump furthermore threatened to “hit you [the Taliban] harder than any country has ever been hit.”
Trump subsequently negotiated a plan for withdrawal from Afghanistan that the Taliban agreed to until President Biden violated it, one that Taliban leaders recalled fondly when Trump was re-elected in 2024.
“It is worth noting that the Doha Agreement,” as the deal was called, “signed between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the United States under President Donald Trump’s administration, marked the conclusion of a two-decade-long foreign military presence in Afghanistan,” the Taliban “foreign ministry” noted in November 2024.
Taliban leaders expressed hope for “tangible progress in the relations between the two countries” under Trump and the opening of “a new chapter of relations in the light of mutual interaction.”
President Trump sent two representatives to Kabul, Adam Boehler, a special envoy on hostages, and former ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad in March to negotiate the release of Americans detained in the country. The Taliban has freed four American citizens since Trump took office in January.
