It was a quick and productive deal.
On March 20, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Response Adam Boehler and former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad dashed to Kabul and held talks with Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s acting foreign minister. This was the first visit by a high-ranking U.S. diplomat to the Afghan capital since the Taliban seized power in 2021.
The talks appear to have focused on the release of George Glezmann, an American citizen who had been detained in Afghanistan for more than two years. A day later, Glezmann was released, hurried into a plane to Doha, and then returned to the United States. Days later, the Trump administration returned the favor: It lifted $20 million in bounties on three prominent members of the Haqqani Network, including the Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani.
Glezmann was the third American to be released by the Taliban this year.
Not long ago, in January 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had threatened Taliban leadership with a “very big” bounty over American hostages. It now appears that concessions, not intimidation, has helped achieve results.
Like all secret deals, whose ex-post revelation generates immense interest, this one, too, came as a surprise. Since little has been revealed, speculations are rife regarding the implications of the release deal brokered by Qatar and the UAE, and whether it marks the dawn of new U.S. policy under Trump toward the Taliban. Commentators have wondered if the U.S. move is a belated attempt to checkmate the growing Chinese influence in Afghanistan or a strategic move to orchestrate an implosion of sorts within the Taliban by undermining their Kandahar-based power center. The Taliban too have contributed to the fog of speculation by highlighting the need for developing “political and economic relations with each other.”
Those speculations, however, have little basis. The quick rendezvous between the United States and the Taliban may have ended for the time being.
Terrorism is politics, and hence, it shouldn’t be a surprise that on multiple occasions yesterday’s terrorists have been allowed to shed their old clothes and transform themselves into entities capable of being “dealt” with even by democracies. Before the Haqqanis, it was a similar state of play in Syria. Periodic expression of opposition to the Taliban Emir Hibatullah Akhundzada’s regressive policies on girls’ education has contributed to an image makeover for Sirajuddin Haqqani. An individual who plotted countless terror attacks has been portrayed as a reformer of sorts, compared to the Kandahar-based shura that dominates Taliban policymaking. Lifting the bounties on Sirajuddin, his brother, and nephew sends a message that the interior minister is no longer considered a terrorist by the U.S., while several other Taliban leaders will enjoy no such privilege.
It is up to Sirajuddin to use this privilege to become an important Taliban contact with the U.S. and subsequently for other countries. Whether he is ready to assume such a role remains an important question. In a bid to become more acceptable, will Sirajuddin mount further challenges to Akhundzada or will he stop short of rocking the boat?
In February 2025, Acting Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai mounted a mini-rebellion of sorts by insisting that Akhundzada must remain glued to the path of God. “If you stray even one step from God’s way, you are no longer my leader, and I do not recognize you,” he said in an audio message. Within days, he had fled to the UAE, to protect himself from the wrath of Akhundzada. Reportedly, Sirajuddin played a role in his safe exit from Afghanistan.
Although Sirajuddin is a far more influential man than Stanekzai, he may not still be ready to declare war on Kandahar, as yet. Remaining united and professing loyalty to the Taliban supremo have been the group’s main survival techniques.
Further, there is little evidence that, despite the successful deal, the U.S. hesitation in normalizing its relations with the Taliban has been overcome. Days before Boehler and Khalilzad’s Kabul trip, Dorothy Shea, the acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, emphasized that Washington is distrustful of the Taliban and considers normalizing relations with them to be impossible.
“The United States is skeptical of the Taliban’s willingness to engage in good faith in the Doha Process. We cannot build confidence with a group that unjustly detains Americans, has a long history of harboring terrorist groups on its soil, and ignores the basic rights and needs of its own people,” she said on March 10, 2025 at a U.N. Security Council Briefing on Afghanistan.
Although Glezmann’s release partly addresses Shea’s list of demands, it is unlikely that the Trump administration will be impressed by the Taliban’s rejection of its demands for the return of weapons left behind by the U.S. forces as they hastily withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021.
The March 2025 Annual Threat Assessment by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence curiously omits any reference to the Taliban or Afghanistan. However, this may simply suggest that the U.S. is not categorizing Afghanistan as a source of threat to its homeland. The Trump administration’s deep-dive engagement with a host of domestic issues, Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Gaza crisis, Iran, and the Houthis leaves it with little time and motivation to deal with Afghanistan. In 2020, Trump scripted a policy to detach the U.S. from Afghanistan and it is unlikely that he will revisit the policy soon.
Eyes must, however, be kept open for any indication of a dialogue – overt or covert – between the Taliban and Washington. Similarly, any further deal for the release of other Americans, like Mahmood Habibi, held by the Taliban, needs to be watched for.
During the March 20 meeting, Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister, provided a list of demands, including the start of consular services for Afghans in the United States. That would necessitate the U.S. allowing Taliban officials to resume such services on American soil. Even with Trump’s self-avowed proclivity for deal-making, the political and legal complexities surrounding the Taliban’s rule may make even an incremental normalization with the Taliban extremely complicated.
Moreover, given his earlier experience of deal-making with the Taliban in Doha in February 2020, the present U.S. administration needs to take stock of the lessons learnt from that flawed deal. It led to the unhindered return of the Taliban in Afghanistan with most of the conditions not being met. The Trump administration would do well to keep that outcome in mind while deal-making in other conflicts.