I was a teenage Afghan refugee in Pakistan’s tribal areas when the Twin Towers fell. Almost nobody around us understood the politics of what had happened, but we knew that something had changed for good. Afghanistan, which until then had been our private tragedy and our first exile from Taliban rule, had suddenly become the world’s concern, with the United States leading the response.

Twenty years later, I was the Afghan ambassador in the United Arab Emirates when Kabul fell to the Taliban and the plane carrying the Afghan president landed in Abu Dhabi. Within days, the U.S.-backed republic no longer existed while I still carried its title. Those two periods frame nearly my entire adult life, just as they mark the beginning and bitter end of America’s longest war. For most Americans and Afghans, it is impossible to think about one without the other. 

As the 25th anniversary of September 11 approaches, and five years since the Taliban takeover, the uncomfortable lesson from both episodes is that overreach and indifference each carry a price. America paid one for trying to remake Afghanistan after 2001. It paid another when it left in 2021, assuming that ignoring Afghanistan would make it less relevant and its threats easier and cheaper to contain from a distance. Both choices carried serious consequences. I was reminded of that history recently in a meeting with President George W. Bush, as we talked about the post-9/11 Afghanistan campaign. The conversation reinforced for me how deeply the choices Washington faces today remain tied to the threats that led to that tragic day, even as those threats have evolved. 

The answer is not a return to the Afghanistan policy of the past 20 years, but neither is pretending Afghanistan no longer matters. Washington faces a narrower but harder challenge today: finding a realistic approach to engagement that protects urgent American security interests, including against growing jihadist threats, without again trying to own Afghanistan’s future.

The case for that middle course begins with the same threat that brought America to Afghanistan in the first place. With the Taliban back fully in charge, al-Qaeda, though diminished and dispersed, is quietly rebuilding parts of its regional network. Various other jihadist networks, notably the Islamic State’s most active regional affiliate, ISIS-K, are using Afghan territory as a base or sanctuary while regrouping in new ways across the region.

The character of the threat itself has also changed across South and Central Asia. Old and new jihadi groups that once competed as rivals are increasingly working together in a codependent ecosystem, sharing recruitment pipelines, financing channels, covert logistics, and operational know-how. Technology has made that convergence more dangerous by putting capabilities once available mainly to large, organized networks into the hands of smaller cells and individuals. As a result, terrorist propaganda has become more energetic, militant partnerships form more easily, and cheap drones, digital payment platforms, and encrypted messaging have made it easier to plot external operations far beyond the region. Much of that convergence centers on Afghanistan, giving militant groups a place to retreat, pool resources, and test the limits of Taliban control. With the Taliban often unwilling or unable to stop them, the greater danger for the United States may be what American intelligence does not fully see until it is too late. 

The second reality is that the Taliban has endured longer than many expected and is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Although its return to power has not produced the moderate and constructive actor some hoped for, sanctions and isolation have likewise not brought down its rule. Instead, the regime has steadily expanded its circle of international partners and convinced more countries to adjust to a reality that the Taliban is here to stay.

In 2025, Russia formally recognized the Taliban government and later signed a military-technical cooperation agreement with it. Moscow now describes its relationship with the Taliban as a “full-fledged partnership.” China has deepened its political ties and intelligence footprint in Afghanistan, while India, once a strong opponent of the Taliban, has expanded its own engagement to the point of handing control of the Afghan embassy in New Delhi to Taliban representatives. Central Asian governments increasingly view Taliban rule as an unavoidable reality rather than a temporary problem they can wait out. The Taliban now operates more than 25 diplomatic missions abroad, including in Europe, while its officials travel regularly to countries such as Belgium, Austria, Germany, Russia, and Moldova. Meanwhile, regional business activity has followed diplomatic engagement. This week, a major Saudi Arabian company signed a $200 million energy agreement with the Taliban, suggesting that commercial interests are beginning to cut through the regime’s political isolation. 

While none of this makes the Taliban legitimate or respectable, it does make one point unavoidable: the Taliban has become harder to isolate, and America’s absence has not stopped rival powers from moving in. That shift in Taliban’s standing also matters because Afghanistan now sits inside a wider contest for influence involving not only China and Russia, but also Iran. 

A serious U.S. approach has to begin by acknowledging that reality and dealing with Afghanistan and its rulers as they are, not as Washington wishes them to be. The question, then, is not whether Washington likes the Taliban, but what it can accomplish by dealing directly with the regime that controls Afghanistan. That does not mean diplomatic recognition or normalizing relations, but rather sizing up the Taliban much as Washington has done with other deeply problematic actors when American interests demand it, with Syria as a recent example. Which Taliban figures and factions are pragmatic? Who can deliver? Where is cooperation possible, where does pressure still work, and where do relationships need to be renegotiated? These are not questions of trust or approval, but of knowing where Washington can exert influence, what it can realistically gain in return, and where selective engagement can advance American interests without legitimizing the regime. 

That’s why a more clear-eyed approach requires the United States to open practical channels with Taliban leaders, especially the powerholders in Kandahar. Engaging with Kandahar is particularly important because Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada has cemented his control from there, even as other senior figures maintain their own networks, guard their interests, and disagree over how the regime should deal with the outside world, including Washington. While those differences are real, they can also make the regime appear more fractured than it actually is. Make no mistake, no internal tension or policy dispute should obscure what still binds the Taliban leadership together. Every Taliban figure believes the movement fought and killed its way back into power, and a regime forged through that kind of struggle is unlikely to give up that power willingly. 

Still, the Taliban is neither a single camp nor nearly as monolithic as it once was, just as the non-Taliban Afghan opposition groups presently arrayed against it. Afghanistan today holds multiple competing political realities, rival factions, private interests, and centers of influence that pull in different directions on both the Taliban and non-Taliban sides. Yemen offers a useful comparison, where what may appear like a two-sided proxy conflict can obscure a much messier contest over who actually calls the shots and can make decisions stick. Afghanistan is much the same.  The useful question is not how to sort the country into two neat camps, but where authority currently sits, who can turn decisions into action, and who can deliver.

To be sure, Haibatullah will not rule forever. When leadership succession eventually comes, it will likely compel the Taliban factions to reopen questions about how power and resources is shared inside Afghanistan, potentially creating room for greater pragmatism and a different relationship with the outside world. Until then, any U.S. policy that assumes the Taliban regime will somehow reform itself out of existence is fantasy. 

More immediately, that should lead Washington back to a basic set of questions. What exactly is the U.S. interest in Afghanistan now? Where does it line up with Afghan (to include the Taliban) interests, and where does it not? And where does Washington still have real leverage? For much of the past two decades, American policy often treated U.S. and Afghan interests as though they were synonymous when they were not. Today, the mistake risks running in the opposite direction, with twenty years of U.S. involvement and a disastrous withdrawal having turned disengagement into a policy of its own. While that indifference is understandable, Afghanistan has a record of surprising those who assume that looking away will make the problem smaller.

Terrorism is the obvious place to test a different approach. ISIS-K has branched out its deadly operations into Pakistan and elsewhere in the region and supports external attacks far beyond it, including through lone actors inside the United States. Al-Qaeda and its top legacy and operational leaders remain present in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, while several Pakistani, Central Asian, and Arab African groups continue to operate from Afghan territory.

The Taliban says Afghan territory will not be used to threaten the United States, something Washington should neither accept on faith nor dismiss out of hand. Instead, it should test that claim, not least because Taliban promises mean little when Washington is left to judge them from a distance. 

More than anything, the United States needs meaningful working relationships on the ground, even when the interlocutors are deeply unsavory. Direct engagement with Taliban decision-makers, though deeply distasteful, could provide access to critical human intelligence and a channel for managing crises. It could also give Washington a clearer picture of how power works inside the regime, which terror groups are operating in the country, how they cooperate, where and how money is moving, and what the Taliban is doing about them. Doing so does not mean embracing the Taliban, but dealing with an actor that calls the shots in Afghanistan, on terms that protect American interests. 

In practical terms, that means building parallel backchannels and conduits across Taliban factions on security and non-security issues, without openly backing one faction over another. This also means keeping relationships reversible, with concessions tied to what the Taliban delivers. Ultimately, the intelligence value of such contact may lie less in what the Taliban says than in what the relationship itself reveals, including how Taliban make decisions, who can influence them, and where internal rivalries create opportunities.

 Such an approach could also bring some clarity to debates over ideas such as retaking Bagram Air Base, particularly given President Trump’s repeated emphasis on the base’s proximity to China’s nuclear sites. The broader appeal of the base is easy to understand, but Bagram is not an Afghanistan policy. The United States controlled the base for two decades without solving Afghanistan’s deeper problems, and there is little reason to think it would do so now. Still, direct contact with the Taliban could help determine whether the idea has any practical basis and what the Taliban might demand in return.

Washington’s humanitarian policy should follow a similar logic. Millions of Afghans continue to face hunger and severe child malnutrition, while the Taliban leadership remains insulated from that suffering. Washington can help without empowering the regime, with aid targeted at civilians and delivered, wherever possible, through channels outside Taliban-run institutions. That distinction matters even more as the Taliban increasingly behaves like a ransom regime, taking American hostages to extract concessions, cash, access, and political legitimacy. Helping Afghans directly can go a long way toward preventing desperation from feeding uncontrolled migration, anti-Americanism, and militant recruitment. At the same time, dialogue with the Taliban should not mean opening a back door to economic investment or political legitimacy before the regime has earned either.

 What’s more, the deteriorating relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan makes direct dialogue even more urgent. For decades, Pakistan sheltered and enabled the Taliban. Today, the two sides are openly fighting, with cross-border attacks and growing accusations over militant sanctuaries. Taliban forces are also using U.S.-supplied weapons left behind after the American withdrawal. While China, Qatar, Turkey and others have stepped in to mediate, Washington should not be content to watch from the sidelines, especially when the next crisis could involve terrorism directed at the United States or another American hostage.

To be clear, none of this argues for normalizing the Taliban regime or forgetting their brutal treatment of Afghan women and girls, or of others who believed the promises America made after 2001. I understand the emotional weight of this personally, both because I supported U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and because I was a direct beneficiary of the American support that followed September 11, including from an extraordinary American family that lost its son aboard the plane that struck the Twin Towers. Those experiences have left me grateful to America and deeply aware of what was lost, but it also does not mean believing America owes Afghanistan another costly project. At the same time, Washington cannot build a policy around the hope that refusing to confront today's reality will somehow change it.

Afghans have watched the United States swing for years between two extremes: trying to remake their country and trying to forget it exists. Neither approach worked. Disengagement has neither erased terrorism nor ended Afghanistan’s ability to produce threats beyond its borders. If anything, neglect has made those threats easier to miss until they return. A narrower, more realistic U.S. approach lies between those extremes, one that protects American interests without Washington trying to control everything. 

Through such a middle course, the United States can maintain security relationships in the country without deploying forces, dialogue with the Taliban under clear conditions without endorsing its rule, help Afghans without financing the regime, and compete with China and Russia without turning Afghanistan into another battlefield. Twenty-five years after 9/11, the hard lesson is that America still cannot afford to look away.