Principal The United States and the Taliban before and after 9/11

The United States and the Taliban before and after 9/11


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The United States  
and the Taliban before  
and after 9/11

Jonathan Cristol

The United States and the Taliban before  
and after 9/11

Jonathan Cristol

The United States  
and the Taliban before 

and after 9/11

Jonathan Cristol
Levermore Global Scholars Program
Adelphi University
Garden City, NY, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-97171-1  ISBN 978-3-319-97172-8 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951574

now known or hereafter developed.
maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © Harvey Loake

This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature 
Switzerland AG 

If wr; iting a book is a lonely process, then it is perhaps loneliest for its 
bystanders. Amanda Toronto, Lucy Cristol, and Milo Cristol bore the 

brunt of my physical and mental absence and they have been tolerant and 

This book is dedicated to them.



My first day of college was 3 August 1996. Some colleges may have 
had high speed internet then, but Bard College in rural Annandale- 
on-Hudson, New York, did not. There were two people in a room 
with one phone line. Such a thing is hard to imagine now. The internet 
was too slow to support graphics on the web, so we used a text-based 
browser called Lynx. Such a thing is even harder to imagine now. There 
was no information superhighway. It was an information creek. My main 
exposure to news of the outside world came each night at midnight 
when I listened to the BBC World Service on the local National Public 
Radio station. That was the first time I heard of the Taliban. For those 
first few weeks of college, I listened as the Taliban got closer and closer 
to Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, and I remember when Kabul fell on 27 
September 2001. And at some point, soon after, I found other things to 
do in college besides lie in bed listening to the BBC.

In my second semester of graduate school at Yale University, I 
attended a debate between Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, an advisor to 
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, and Harold Koh, a profes-
sor at Yale Law School who later became assistant secretary of state for 
human rights in the Obama Administration. Professor Koh spoke in legal 
and academic terms. His arguments were based in theory and legality. 
Mr. Rahmatullah articulated his positions clearly and convincingly. His 
arguments were rooted in the reality on the ground. Koh was clearly cor-
rect on the merits, but Rahmatullah handily won the debate. There was 
a reception for the foreign dignitary upstairs where I discovered that the 

viii   PREFACE

Taliban were regular people, and not the monsters I’d believed them to 
be. Rahmatullah was neither a naive simpleton nor a cartoon dictator. It 
was my first taste of public diplomacy and lessons from the experience 
stick with me more than 17 years later.

On my way to Prof. Jon Butler’s class, “Religion and Modernity in 
Europe and America,” I heard a radio report that a plane had crashed 
into the World Trade Center. A terrible accident, we held class as nor-
mal and only afterward discovered what happened. The Taliban did not 
carry out 9/11, but they were back in the news. They refused to turn 
over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks, and the United 
States invaded Afghanistan on 7 October 2001. Kabul fell (again) on 13 
November 2001.

In the following years, I finished my M.A., got married, had a daugh-
ter, finished my Ph.D., and had a son. Now my children are in elemen-
tary school, the United States has 15,000 troops in Afghanistan, and 
the Taliban just agreed to a “ceasefire” for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday mark-
ing the end of the holy month of Ramadan. The quotation marks are 
because the Taliban said that the ceasefire did not apply to foreign forces.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan, I heard little about Washington’s 
relationship with the Taliban before 9/11, but I knew one existed. I 
knew Rahmatullah did not travel from Kandahar just to talk to a bunch of 
Yale students. I wanted to learn more about that relationship, specifically 
why the US did not recognize the Taliban government as the legitimate 
government of Afghanistan when it could make a compelling legal case 
for recognition. President Bill Clinton’s non-recognition of the Taliban 
government became a case study in my doctoral dissertation completed 
at the University of Bristol in 2012—“American Diplomatic Recognition 
and Classical Realist International Relations Theory.” This book is an 
expansion of that case study.

I am a professional critic. I can explain why policymakers’ decisions 
are bad without having to offer any helpful alternatives. In my disserta-
tion, I argued that the Clinton Administration’s non-recognition of the 
Taliban government was a mistake, and that it would have been better 
to recognize the Taliban government. My 2012 argument was that the 
Clinton Administration was too influenced by domestic politics, and that 
the influence of the Feminist Majority Foundation, while well meaning, 
was ultimately negative. The reality is more complicated.

The US and the Taliban held countless meetings, in Afghanistan, 
in Pakistan, and even in the United States, but could never come to a 


workable arrangement. The Taliban’s primary interest was for the US 
to extend diplomatic recognition to the Taliban government in Kabul. 
America’s primary interest was for the Taliban to expel Osama bin 
Laden. This book examines both why diplomatic recognition was so 
important to the Taliban government and why the US refused to recog-
nize it. It is a story about people making reasonable and defensible deci-
sions that ultimately led to poor policy outcomes.

Chapter 1 focuses on diplomatic recognition of new governments, the 
competing theories of diplomatic recognition, and the benefits that come 
from recognition. Chapter 2 is about the rise of the Taliban and the pos-
sibility of a positive and productive relationship between the Taliban 
and the US. Chapter 3 is a history of US/Taliban relations from the fall 
of Kabul until the Al Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and 
Tanzania. Chapter 4 examines how the US/Taliban relationship evolved 
in the first year after the embassy attacks. It shows that while the Clinton 
Administration outwardly opposed recognizing the Taliban government 
due to its treatment of women, behind-the-scenes it was willing to prior-
itize bin Laden at the expense of women’s rights. Chapter 5 focuses on 
the deterioration in relations in the two years prior to 9/11. Chapter 6 
focuses on 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan. I argue that there 
was a very brief window in which US recognition of the Taliban govern-
ment might have prevented Al Qaeda from taking root in Afghanistan, 
but by 1997 the opportunity had passed and Omar’s obstinance 
meant there was no chance the US would ever recognize the Taliban  
government. I conclude that President George W. Bush erred by treating 
terrorists “and those who harbor them” the same way and that the 2001 
invasion and occupation of Afghanistan could have been avoided.

The book is almost entirely based on publicly available primary sources 
and contemporaneous accounts including: declassified government doc-
uments, primarily from the State Department and Central Intelligence 
Agency and located at the National Security Archive at George 
Washington University; congressional hearing transcripts; presidential 
speeches and press conferences; and United Nations Security Council 
transcripts. Some of these had not yet been declassified when I wrote my 
dissertation. The documents tell a different story than I had anticipated.

This is a story about bad options.

New York City, USA  
June 2018

Jonathan Cristol



I could not have written this book without the help of some great people 
and institutions.

The Levermore Global Scholars (LGS) program at Adelphi University 
provided financial and administrative support for the research and writ-
ing of this book. I am especially grateful to Peter DeBartolo, Cindy 
Maguire, and Michelle Schneider for making LGS such a welcoming 
environment. The World Policy Institute (WPI) has been my home for 
the past three years, and I am particularly grateful to Kate Maloff for 
her outstanding leadership and support for my work. Rachel Meyer, 
Jonathan Becker, Jim Ketterer, and Julia Tinneny at Bard College gave 
me (literal) space to finish writing and editing the book. Jutta Weldes 
is a tough reader, harsh critic, and good friend. Her guidance over 
many years improved my writing, my research, and my analytical think-
ing. Andy Reiter helped me navigate the peer review process. Vanessa 
Bobadilla provided the technical means to finish writing. Stephanie 
Carvin explained how to read Canadian government document headers. 
Giles Alston was literally relentless in encouraging me to write a book. 
Joel Rosenthal has been a great friend and mentor for over 15 years. My 
CNN and World Policy Journal editors Yaffa Fredrick, Kirsi Goldynia, 
Laurel Jarombek, and Luke McGee all made me a better writer. Yunju 
Ko, Kim Lalley, David Pavey, and Cynthia Wong’s confidence in me is 
deeply meaningful, and hopefully not misplaced. Bridget Coggins’ work 
is always ten steps ahead of my own and she is an intellectual trailblazer. 
Obviously Gruber. The late James Chace inspired my love of diplomatic 


history and international relations theory. Jeremy Cristol is the kind of 
doctor who can actually help people, and his help with my wrist made it 
physically possible to write this book. He is also an incredibly generous 
and loving brother. Rebecca Kittell and James Cristol provided just the 
right amount of parental encouragement without crossing the line into 
micromanagement. Hopefully, I will be able to find that line with my 
own children.

I have been extraordinarily fortunate to benefit from several outstand-
ing research assistants. Madeline de Figueiredo, Anusha Prasad, and 
Alana Sheppard provided valuable assistance for the original book pro-
posal. Sona Lim, Kayla Straub, Zuwaina Ateig, and Ji Won Lim helped 
with all of my assorted, simultaneous projects. I am especially grateful to 
Nada Osman, my LGS research assistant, and Mashell Rahimzadeh, my 
WPI research assistant. Ms. Osman spent months tracking down sources 
and collating and organizing thousands of pages of government docu-
ments, congressional testimony, UN transcripts, and academic articles. 
She is reliable and diligent and this could not have been done without 
her. Ms. Rahimzadeh fact-checked dates, names, and places, and found 
answers to dozens and dozens of my questions. She is a brilliant copy-
editor, artful writer, and excellent guide to Afghan culture. The book is 
much better because of her help. I am looking forward to seeing great 
things from all of my past and present RAs (no pressure!). Most impor-
tantly, any typos, errors, or inaccuracies are mine and mine alone.

This book began as a chapter of my doctoral dissertation at the 
University of Bristol under the supervision of Jutta Weldes and Elke 
Krahmann. I am grateful to them and to my outside examiners Anthony 
Lang and Ryerson Christie for their valuable comments. Portions of 
this book were presented as papers at the American Political Science 
Association Annual Convention in 2010 and at the International Studies 
Association (ISA) Annual Conventions in 2008 and 2010. I am grateful 
to the people who showed up and asked tough questions at those panels. 
The anonymous reviewers for Palgrave gave thoughtful, thorough, and 
helpful comments.

It was at the ISA 2017 Convention in Baltimore that I met my edi-
tor, Anca Pusca, from Palgrave Macmillan. I am grateful to her and 
to Katelyn Zingg for their encouragement, time, energy, and putting 
up with my (hopefully relatively brief) delays and my (almost certainly 
annoying) questions!


Lucy Cristol and Milo Cristol have put up with their father’s mental 
and physical absence for most of their lives. They managed it wonder-
fully and they are always (kinda) interested in what I am doing, though I 
suspect they would be happier if I was writing a Who Was? book or a My 
Little Pony graphic novel.

Nothing I do would be possible without the love and support (and 
editorial guidance) of the brilliant writer Amanda R. Toronto. When 
she’s not around, I, to borrow her phrase, “literally go off the rails.” I’m 
not sure how many wives would tolerate their husband saying, “I need 
to go away for a week on Tuesday but I can’t tell you where and I won’t 
know myself until I get there,” or, more frequently, their husband sitting 
at the dinner table with his face in the computer. I appreciate it. You put 
up with a lot. I love you.

Thank you all.



1 Introduction: Diplomatic Recognition  
and the Taliban Movement  1

2 The Rise of the Taliban  11

3 The Taliban Take Kabul and a New Friend  
Moves to Kandahar  25

4 US/Taliban Relations and the Intervention  
of Domestic Politics  49

5 The US and the Taliban Talk in Circles  
as the bin Laden Threat Grows  75

6 Conclusion: One Last Chance  93

Index  107


author’s note

Every book involves choices. Here are a few that I made and why I made 

I cite most government documents without using page or para-
graph numbers. If you have ever looked at a pdf of a State Department 
cable you will understand why. The pagination is confusing and there are 
multiple options from which to choose. None of the documents are so 
long that the lack of page or paragraph number presents a problem. I 
use uniform, popular spellings across the text, quotes, citations, 
and titles. For example, “Osama bin Laden” is popularly spelled with an 
“O,” but in many government documents it is spelled with a “U.” I have 
standardized the spelling without indication in each instance. And speak-
ing of Osama bin Laden, I refer to him as “bin Laden,” in deference to 
the popular nomenclature and not as “Osama,” which would be more 
culturally appropriate. I have standardized the spelling of Afghan 
names. The names are transliterated and the spelling is often the choice 
of the author, so for readability, I have used the most common spelling 
for each person or name. A note on Afghan naming: The second com-
ponent of male names is often treated as a last name. For example, I refer 
to Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi as “Rahmatullah,” and Wakil Ahmed 
Muttawakil as “Ahmed.” A note on State Department documents: I 
have attributed authorship of State Department documents to the person 
who signed the document, but the reader should be aware that it is often 
the case that the document was actually written by someone of a lower 


Abstract  Recognition was the top foreign policy priority of the new 
Taliban movement in Afghanistan. This chapter answers two questions: 
What is diplomatic recognition? and Why was American diplomatic rec-
ognition so important to the Taliban? The chapter explains the different 
theoretical and legal criteria that states use to recognize new regimes or 
new states. It investigates the tangible and intangible benefits that come 
from diplomatic recognition. Recognition legitimates the authority of 
the government for the domestic audience. Domestic legitimacy was 
especially important to the Taliban, who were engaged in a civil war for 
the majority of their tenure. It argues that the United States adheres to 
a constitutive theory of diplomatic recognition and recognizes new gov-
ernments for political, rather than legal, reasons. It did not recognize the 
Taliban government for domestic political reasons and a misperception 
of the geostrategic importance of Afghanistan after the Cold War.

Keywords  Afghanistan · Diplomatic recognition · Effective control 
Legitimacy · Taliban · United States foreign policy

In 1994, the Afghan government was an amalgam of different muja-
hedeen groups armed by the United States to fight the Soviet Union in  
the 1979–1989 Soviet–Afghan War. The mujahedeen’s tenure in 
power was marked by constant armed conflict between factions, which 
resulted in little stability for the average Afghan. The instability was so  


Introduction: Diplomatic Recognition 
and the Taliban Movement

© The Author(s) 2019 
J. Cristol, The United States and the Taliban before and after 9/11,

2  J. crIstol

great that at one point, Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the recog-
nized prime minister of Afghanistan, “threatened to destroy his own capi-
tal city” (Gannon 2005, p. 12). Hekmatyar was a friend of Saudi terrorist 
Osama bin Laden and had a horrifying human rights record. One Defense 
Intelligence Agency raw-intelligence report called Hekmatyar an, “incom-
petent… Islamic fundamentalist who reportedly boasted about throwing 
acid in the faces of women who did not wear the traditional, all-covering, 
Afghan chador” (Anonymous. Redacted. 2001). Burhanuddin Rabbani, 
the recognized president of Afghanistan, believed that Afghanistan should 
be governed according to Islamic law. A United States Senate Resolution 
singled out his forces for “numerous abhorrent human rights abuses, 
including the rape, sexual abuse, torture, abduction, and persecution of 
women and girls” (Dodd 1997, par. 3).1 This was the government recog-
nized by the United States as the legitimate government of Afghanistan at 
the start of the Taliban movement.

This chapter looks at two questions: What is diplomatic recognition? 
and Why did the Taliban care so much about the United States recog-
nizing the Taliban government? Though the Taliban did not formally 
request recognition until 8 November 1996, it was a top priority of its 
foreign policy from the founding of the movement until almost the day 
the US invasion of Afghanistan began on 7 October 2001. The Taliban 
did not seek recognition only from the United States. They also prior-
itized gaining control of Afghanistan’s seat in the United Nations and 
sought recognition from a wide range of other governments as well. 
They were successful only in persuading Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the 
United Arab Emirates to grant diplomatic recognition to the Taliban. 
The Taliban did not desire recognition to gratify their own egos. 
Recognized states enjoy a particular set of rights and privileges.

Recognition is not “merely cognition” (Briggs 1949, p. 120). 
Diplomatic recognition is the process by which one state recog-
nizes a particular political entity as a state, with all of the rights, priv-
ileges, duties, and obligations of statehood. Diplomatic recognition 
is not only extended to new states, but also to new governments that 
come to power through irregular means (typically, but not always, vio-
lent). Recognition of a state is recognition of its existence. Recognition 
of a government is recognition of its legitimacy. In 1979, the Islamic 
Republic of Iran required re-recognition as Iran’s legitimate govern-
ment, but the sovereign state of Iran remained recognized. The Taliban 
capture of Kabul, and later 90% of Afghanistan’s territory, presented 


the world with a similar situation—Afghanistan did not require re-rec-
ognition, but so long as the Taliban were unrecognized, President 
Burhanuddin Rabbani’s government remained recognized as the legit-
imate government of Afghanistan despite controlling only 10% of 
Afghanistan’s territory.2

There are two sets of generally accepted criteria for what constitutes a 
state. The first criteria originate from the 1933 “Montevideo Convention 
on the Rights and Duties of States,” which defined a state as an entity 
that has (1) a permanent population, (2) a defined territory, (3) a gov-
ernment, and (4) the capacity to enter into external relations with other 
states, meaning that it has an independent foreign policy. The second set 
of criteria comes from “Agenda Item 61” of the (1950) Fifth Session of 
the United Nations General Assembly. The UN criteria, more applicable 
to recognition of new governments than states and thus, more relevant to 
the Taliban question, define states as entities that have (1) “effective con-
trol and authority over all or nearly all the national territory,” (2) “obe-
dience of the bulk of the population,” and (3) the “control, authority,  
and obedience appear to be of a permanent character.” Neither of these 
sets of criteria have anything to do with democracy, or liberal govern-
ment. The people do not even have to be supportive of the government; 
they could tacitly acquiesce to the government’s authority. At its peak, 
the Taliban government exerted “effective control” over “nearly all the 
national territory,” its presence appeared permanent, and the bulk of the 
population was not in rebellion against it. The fact that the Taliban gov-
ernment met these criteria did not automatically entitle it to recognition 
from the United States.

Afghanistan under the Taliban clearly met the Montevideo criteria for 
statehood, and Afghanistan’s continued existence as a sovereign state was 
never in dispute. The Taliban’s qualifications for recognition as the legit-
imate government of Afghanistan under the UN criteria are more argu-
able as the Taliban never succeeded in pacifying the entirety of the state. 
The Taliban had a tougher case to make for it to be seated in the UN. 
Membership in the UN requires governments to be “willing and able 
to carry out UN charter obligations” (Blanchfield and Browne 2014,  
p. 5). It is clear that the Taliban were not able to meet these obliga-
tions and they likely did not even understand what they were. Australian 
National University’s William Maley (2000, par. 18) writes that the Taliban 
had, “Little understanding of the evolved practices of modern diplomacy; 
virtually no comprehension of the politics of states outside the Muslim 

4  J. crIstol

world.” The desire for recognition was intuitive, not the result of knowl-
edge of international law.

However, for all intents and purposes, for the United States, the deci-
sion to recognize a new state or new government is not the result of 
an objective assessment of specific criteria; it is a political decision. The 
United States adheres to the “constitutive theory of recognition”—a 
state exists when other states say it exists. There are those who argue 
that the United States should follow an alternate model—the “declara-
tory theory of recognition.” This theory sees recognition as a three-step 
process: (1) a political entity declares itself a new state or in control of a 
preexisting state; (2) the potential recognizer applies some set of preex-
isting criteria for statehood to the new entity; and (3) if it meets those 
criteria it is recognized; if it does not meet those criteria, it is not recog-
nized. Thus, recognition is either automatic or unnecessary. Automatic 
because a government needs only to meet the criteria to be recognized, 
and unnecessary because if it meets objective criteria, there is no need 
to internationally validate a government with recognition. Thomas 
Jefferson was a supporter of the declarative approach to recognition, 
as he did not think the United States should make political judgments 
about foreign governments (Weeks 2001). Successive American pres-
idents shared Jefferson’s position until President Woodrow Wilson 
changed US policy for ideological reasons.

The most common approach to recognition in either theory is “effec-
tivism”—the idea that a government that is “in actual control of the 
administrative machinery of the state, is performing normal govern-
mental functions, and is not meeting with open resistance to its author-
ity” is the legitimate government of the state (Fenwick 1944, p. 448). 
The lack of open resistance helps to indicate to the states in the system 
that the new government is legitimate. The French justified recogni-
tion of the United States as a response to the “effective possession of 
independence” after the American Revolution (Fabry 2010, p. 30). 
Nevertheless, Georgia Institute of Technology’s Mikulas Fabry (2010, 
p. 41) argues that, “The ability to take effective control of a territory, 
whether from within or without, could not, by itself establish legitimate 
titles.” Historically, effective control was a necessary, but not sole, con-
dition for recognition. A state is not compelled by international law to 
recognize any government that has effective control, but legally it cannot 
recognize one that does not. There is, however, an “effectivist” theory of 
diplomatic recognition—that if a new government has effective control 


over its territory, then it is the state’s legitimate government, regardless 
of its character. Thus, effectivism is similar to the declaratory theory, but 
is specific about the requirement for recognition to be granted.3 Yet even 
effectivism is not widely practiced. If effectivism were widely practiced, 
then, at the apex of their power, the Taliban would have been recognized 
by more than three states.

The declaratory approach to recognition may seem simpler, but 
despite specific sets of criteria used by states, multiple states that do not 
meet those criteria have been universally recognized and indisputably 
exist. University of California at Santa Barbara’s Bridget Coggins (2006, 
p. 10) writes, “There are very few cases in recent history where new state 
members unambiguously met the theoretical or legal standards for state-
hood, yet states have proliferated.” And while the declaratory approach 
may seem simpler, between 1931 and 2002 only four states (Bangladesh, 
Eritrea, Slovenia, and Somaliland) met the criteria for statehood yet only 
three of those were recognized, along with a myriad of others (Coggins 
2006, p. 89).

Fabry (2010, p. 14) argues that the current, political approach to rec-
ognition is arbitrary and that, “It is doubtful that there is any sustainable 
basis for recognizing states other than the one suggested by the nine-
teenth-century Anglo-American doctrine, namely de facto statehood.” 
James Crawford (2006, p. 93), a judge at the International Court of 
Justice, agrees, writing that, “An entity is not a state because it is recog-
nized; it is recognized because it is a state.” Coggins (2006) reaches a 
different conclusion, arguing that political acts of recognition provide a 
sound basis for recognition decisions.

The constitutive theory of recognition is far more reflective of real-
ity than its objectivist rival. Statehood and legitimacy are not connected  
to objective criteria. A political entity becomes a state when others say 
that it is a state. A government is legitimate when others say it is legiti-
mate. Recognition constitutes statehood and/or legitimacy. In practice, 
states recognize new governments for specific reasons. Coggins (2006, 
pp. 19–20) offers four scenarios in which a state would have cause to 
offer recognition: (1) when there is geostrategic benefit; (2) when 
domestic politics makes recognition the preferred policy; (3) when 
international norms dictate that recognition should be offered; and (4) 
when there is some sort of kinship between peoples. Coggins’ scenar-
ios help explain why the US never recognized the Taliban government. 
There was a misperception of the geostrategic benefit to recognition of 

6  J. crIstol

the Taliban government. American domestic politics made recognition 
exceedingly difficult. The Taliban violated a wide range of international 
norms, from the 1971 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to 
the 1979 International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages, and 
most famously their horrifying treatment of women and girls. And while 
the US had armed and aided the mujahedeen in their fight against the 
Soviet Union, there was little blood or battle kinship.

Decisions to recognize a new state or new government are made based 
on ideological grounds all the time. That states are recognized simply 
because they de facto exist is a fiction that is hard to maintain, and a close 
look at the map should serve to dispel such notions. Indeed, there are 
ten self-declared independent political entities that have been function-
ing independently for years including Somaliland, Taiwan, and Western 
Sahara (Geldenhuys 2009, p. 2). Recognition provides tangible and 
intangible benefits to a new government, which is why every new gov-
ernment desires recognition. Recognition provides “pivotal legitimacy” 
to a government’s claim to sovereignty (Coggins 2006, p. 18). Perhaps 
the most important benefit that comes from recognition is “sovereignty.” 
A sovereign, recognized government can refuse entry to foreign forces, 
can negotiate and enter into international agreements, and can join 
international organizations and call on them to act inside its territory.  
This could mean assisting in suppressing an insurgency or providing 
humanitarian assistance. In practice, this may not be so clear cut—the 
Taliban were themselves the insurgency in Afghanistan, until, argua-
bly, they were not, but the United Nations and a variety of aid groups 
worked and reached agreements with the Taliban anyway. A recognized 
government is entitled to state assets in foreign banks. This was an issue 
for the Taliban, who wanted access to Afghan money held internation-
ally. A recognized government enjoys the extraterritoriality of its embas-
sies and consulates and its diplomats enjoy immunity, at least within 
those states that recognize it. Only a recognized government can bor-
row money from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund 
(IMF), which can have the result of keeping unrecognized governments 
in a particularly precarious financial situation. Recognition also confers 
obligations on the recognized government. For example, it must abide 
by treaties and it is bound by international law (Crawford 2006).

These are not only some of the major tangible benefits for a recog-
nized government in the international community, but there are also 
intangible internal and external benefits for a recognized government. 


For relatively weak states, internal, intangible benefits may actually be the 
most important of all. The most important internal, intangible benefit is 
legitimacy. The people can consider governments legitimate if they meet 
their needs and provide basic services to the population. In order to 
meet these needs, states must acquire tangible resources. These resources 
can be extracted from either the people or from other states. But they 
can only extract resources from other states if those states recognize it. 
Legitimacy can also come from the government gaining power through 
free and fair elections, at least for adherents to the idea of “democratic 

Recognition can enhance a government’s chance for survival if it hap-
pens quickly and is widely reported (Peterson 1982, p. 329). Conversely, 
non-recognition can make life difficult for the government involved, 
particularly if it is militarily weak or lacks desirable natural resources. If 
a potential recognizer does not favor the new government, it can both 
withhold recognition and provide aid to the previous government. This 
is perfectly acceptable so long as the recognizer acknowledges that sov-
ereignty is still contested and it has chosen to back the original gov-
ernment. However, the recognizer cannot continue to recognize the 
original government once it has lost “effective control” of its territory. 
University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s M.J. Peterson (1982, p. 332) 
writes that such recognition is “clearly illegal because it willfully ignores 
the absence of effective control.” This situation is called “prolonged 
recognition.”4 Despite the illegality of this diplomatic tactic, there are 
examples of it throughout American diplomatic history. The United 
States recognized the Chinese nationalists as sovereign over mainland 
China long after it lost effective control to the communists; and the US 
continued to recognize the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani in 
Afghanistan long after he had lost effective control to the Taliban.

Powerful countries can be expected to extract resources from other 
states to benefit their own constituents, while weaker states must rely 
on “external validation” to remain in power. As Dartmouth College’s 
Michael Mastanduno et al. (1989, p. 464) writes, “For new states (i.e., 
those that have come to power in the wake of internal revolutions), 
external validation involves first and foremost diplomatic recognition. 
Gaining recognition of the international community appears to be an 
exceptionally powerful means for a nascent state to establish legitimacy 
in the eyes of the domestic population.” Thus it is important for most 
non-Marxist revolutionary governments to show their people that it is 

8  J. crIstol

no longer a revolutionary insurgency, uprising, or political group, but it 
has been accepted as the legitimate government of the state and thus the 
people should now treat it as such. This could be why, as Maley (2000, 
par. 15) writes, “The first broad policy objective of the Taliban was to 
win acceptance as a government.” Recognition legitimates the author-
ity of the government for the domestic audience. Domestic legitimacy 
was especially important to the Taliban who were engaged in a civil war 
against the “United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan,” 
more widely known as the “Northern Alliance,” for the majority of their 

1.  Abdul Rashid Dostum, leader of the National Islamic Movement of 

Afghanistan, was cited alongside Rabbani.
2.  Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated in his Kabul home on 20 

September 2011 (Rubin 2011).
3.  Switzerland and Britain have advocated formally changing the practice of 

recognition to an effectivist approach, but they also include democracy as a 
necessary factor for recognition (Grant 1998–1999, p. 444).

4.  See M.J. Peterson (1997, Chapter 3) for further discussion of “prolonged 

5.  The Taliban also faced opposition from other groups throughout 

Anonymous. Redacted. 2001. [Redacted]/Veteran Afghanistan Traveler’s 

Analysis of Al Qaeda and Taliban Exploitable Weaknesses [from Defense 
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Agency, document accessed at the National Security Archive, Washington, 

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Nations and Its Specialized Agencies. R43614, Congressional Research 
Service, 19 June 2014.

Briggs, Herbert W. 1949. Recognition of States: Some Reflections on Doctrine 
and Practice. The American Journal of International Law 43 (1): 113–121.

Coggins, Bridget. 2006. Secession, Recognition and the International Politics of 
Statehood. PhD dissertation, Columbus, OH, The Ohio State University.


Crawford, James. 2006. The Creation of States in International Law, 2nd ed. 
New York: Oxford University Press.

Dodd, Christopher. 1997. Senate Concurrent Resolution 6. 7 February 1997, 
105th Congress, 1st Session. Government Publications Office.

Fabry, Mikulas. 2010. Recognizing States: International Society & the 
Establishment of New States Since 1776. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fenwick, C.G. 1944. The Recognition of New Governments Instituted by Force. 
The American Journal of International Law 38 (3): 448–452.

Gannon, Kathy. 2005. I Is for Infidel. New York: Public Affairs.
Grant, Thomas D. 1998. Defining Statehood: The Montevideo Convention and 

Its Discontents. Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 37: 403–457.
Geldenhuys, Deon. 2009. Contested States in World Politics. New York: Palgrave 

Maley, William. 2000. The Foreign Policy of the Taliban. Report, Council on 

Foreign Relations. 15 February 2000. Web.
Mastanduno, Michael, et al. 1989. Toward a Realist Theory of State Action. 

International Studies Quarterly 33 (4): 457–474.
Peterson, M.J. 1982. Political Use of Recognition: The Influence of the 

International System. World Politics 34 (3): 324–352.
Peterson, M.J. 1997. Recognition of Governments: Legal Doctrine and State 

Practice, 1815–1995. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
Rubin, Alissa J. 2011. Assassination Deals Blow to Peace Process in Afghanistan. 

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Weeks, Gregory. 2001. Almost Jeffersonian: US Recognition Policy Toward 

Latin America. Presidential Studies Quarterly 31 (3): 490–504.


Abstract  The Taliban were founded by Mullah Mohammed Omar in 
the mid-1990s. The specifics of the origin story vary between sources, 
but one thing is certain—the Taliban rapidly expanded their territorial 
control. The United States needed to know who this new group was 
and began regular meetings with the Taliban in early 1995. This chapter 
explores the rise of the Taliban and the US relationship with the Taliban 
from the start of the movement until the fall of Kabul in September 
1996. In this time period, the US and the Taliban had a cordial relation-
ship; but the US was concerned both about women’s rights under the 
Taliban and about the Taliban’s obvious unwillingness to seek a negoti-
ated settlement with Afghanistan’s weak central government.

Keywords  Afghanistan · Diplomacy · Mullah Mohammed Omar 
Taliban · United States foreign policy

The Taliban were formed by Mullah Mohammed Omar.1 Omar was a 
man of few words, with an “idiosyncratic almost obscurantist, style 
of leadership” (Simons 1997c). He focused on the big picture, and let 
others handle the implementation of his policies. One visitor described 
him as “Uninspiring, without charisma. He had no idea what was going 
on in the world. He knew only jihad” (Filkins 2001, par. 36). His exact 
age was never known with certainty. CIA documents say he was born in 
1960, but United Nations documents list his birth as 1950 (“Security 


The Rise of the Taliban

© The Author(s) 2019 

12  J. crIstol

Council Committee Concerning” 2001). A confidential source told 
US Political Officer Eric Kunsman (1996) that Omar was from, “The 
Khotak tribe, which is not very important. This insulates him from 
the tribal rivalry within [the] Taliban.” Omar was humble and he was 

Omar began the group from a mosque in Sanjli in southern 
Afghanistan. He, like the other Taliban leadership, was a rural man, not 
used to places like Kabul, or even to small towns in the more liberal 
north. In the north, educated women walked around uncovered. They 
worked in the professions. Schulz and Schulz (1999, p. 243) write that 
before the Taliban takeover, 60% of Kabul University teachers, 70% of 
were women. Kabul even had an active nightlife. This milieu would have 
been completely alien to Omar.

Life was harder in the rural, lawless south. Omar was fed up with the 
lawlessness and crime and decided to take matters into his own hands. 
That much is clear. The specifics of his rise vary between accounts. 
Perhaps the most common origin story of Mullah Omar and the Taliban 
is that, whenever Omar left Sanjli, he encountered roadblocks run by 
bandits demanding money. Fed up with banditry and extortion, he gath-
ered together other mullahs and marched on a checkpoint. Their success 
in dismantling the checkpoint attracted followers and further success, 
which begat further success, and led to the creation of an armed move-
ment against what Omar saw as Kabul’s corruption. The original group 
was made up of 60 mullahs, but their students soon joined them and 
thus the group became known as “the students,” or “Taliban” (Gannon 
2005, p. 31). At least, that is one widely accepted possible origin story.

Another account was given by a Taliban official to US Ambassador to 
Pakistan John Cameron Monjo. He told him that the Taliban began, “At 
the madrasa of a prominent trader [and Omar’s former commander], 
Haji Bashar” (Monjo 1995b).2 Mullah Omar was not the most distin-
guished scholar, nor was he “particularly charismatic nor articulate,” but 
he “earned a reputation for bravery… honesty, and sincerity.” After some 
fellow students were gang-raped by a commander and his men, Omar 
had a vision of the Prophet Mohammed, who told him to bring peace 
to Afghanistan. Bashar raised $250,000 for Omar and contributed six 
pick-up trucks (Monjo 1995b). The New York Times’ Dexter Filkins 
(2001, par. 33) corroborated part of that story reporting that Omar’s 
original offensive was against “a group of warlords who had raped and 


shaved the head of a girl.” Later Filkins (2008, p. 30) wrote that Omar 
“decided he’d had enough” when he witnessed “two warlords fighting 
over the rights to a very young boy.”

Another common and compelling argument is that the Taliban were 
the creation of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) 
and were armed, trained, and funded directly by Pakistan. In this ver-
sion of events, the original 60 mullahs came from madrassas in Pakistan 
and exploited the ethnic kinship of Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns to 
create a new force in southern Afghanistan. Barnett Rubin (1998, par. 
20), arguably the world’s leading expert on Afghanistan, said that the 
Taliban, “Succeeded largely because of the military aid they received 
from Pakistan.”

The Taliban were not unpopular. One report stated that when the 
Taliban first achieved victories they were “warmly welcomed,” but have 
“closed down girls’ schools, sent working women home and set up strict 
Islamic courts. Spokesmen have declared television, drugs and elections 
un-Islamic.” The same report says that the leadership is unclear beyond 
Omar, and the composition of the approximately eight man ruling body 
“changes frequently” (MacFarquhar 1995, pars. 7–9). There was much 
that was unknown about the group, its leader, and its leadership.

The United States did not know enough about the Taliban and 
needed to find out more. Because the US embassy in Kabul had been 
closed since 1989, the job was primarily tasked to the US embassy in 
Islamabad and the US consulate in Peshawar. On 3 November 1994, 
US Consul General in Peshawar Richard Henry Smyth sent Secretary of 
State Warren Christopher a cable about this new group. Smyth, aided 
by still-classified sources, provides one of the earliest histories of the 
Taliban. His account differs from those discussed above: Mullah Omar’s 
“Taliban” was actually the second group operating under that name 
in Kandahar. The first was led by Mullah Yar Mohammad. The second, 
then known as the “New Taliban,” was founded by Mullah Omar and 
his deputy Mullah Ehsanullah Ehsan.3 The new group’s initial goal was 
quite modest—to “‘clean up’ the Chaman-Kandahar Highway” and its 
first victory was over a freelance commander named Fatah Mohammad 
who extorted drivers along the road. He was defeated, tried, and hung. 
After that incident, “Independent toll stations along [that] highway 
reportedly drastically reduced in number,” and the Taliban continued 
to clear the roads. According to Smyth, Ehsanullah told the BBC that  
their goals were to “open the highway to free traffic” and remove the 

14  J. crIstol

“Wahhabi and Salafi influence” from the area. Smyth could not be cer-
tain if they did or did not receive support from Pakistan—“The Taliban 
have been characterized as being simultaneously Pakistani tools and  
anti-Pakistan”—but concluded by saying, “If the Taliban was created by 
secular or outside forces, however, it is very possible that their backers may 
find that they have created a tiger that is more than willing to take inde-
pendent action and not be anyone’s tool.” One of Smyth’s most interest-
ing observations was that the Taliban were, “largely drawn from religious 
students who did not fight in the jihad [emphasis added]” (Smyth 1994).

Just a few weeks later, on 28 November 1994, Monjo sent another 
long cable to Secretary Christopher about the new player in Kandahar. 
He was still not certain about the extent of Pakistan’s involvement 
in the creation of the Taliban—“The origins, goals and sponsors of 
the ‘Taliban’… movement remain unclear, even to well-informed 
Afghans”—but reached a different conclusion about their military back-
ground. Monjo wrote that the Taliban was a group that, “Fought with 
distinction against the Soviets” and were then “re-mobilized through a 
combination of frustration with extortionist party commanders and for-
eign financing—probably by conservative religious groups in Pakistan.” 
These discrepancies show just how little was known about the Taliban at 
the time.

Different declassified documents from 1994 focus primarily on the 
role of Pakistan in the Taliban’s creation and its military success and 
reach different conclusions. One thing that all early accounts agree 
on was that, regardless of the origin story, Pakistan would be unlikely 
to effectively control the Taliban. State Department Bureau of South 
Asian Affairs official R.L. Chew (circa. 1996) wrote in a document on 
Pakistan/Afghanistan relations that while, “Pakistan has given material 
and tactical support to the Taliban…. Privately they admit they do not 
want to see the Taliban in power in Kabul.” Pakistan may have wanted 
the Taliban to be included in the government, but did not want them to 
be the government. It was not until 1998 that Pakistan admitted that it 
had been arming the Taliban, though when it started to do so remains 
unclear (Simons 1998a).

Information about the Taliban was much easier to come by in  
1995. They had gained in strength and popularity. Mullah Omar 
began giving interviews to the BBC. John Holzman (1995a), the US 
Deputy Chief of Mission in Islamabad reported back to Washington 
that the Taliban were “Well-armed, militarily proficient, and eager to 


expand their influence.” Holzman heard from multiple sources that the 
Taliban intended to continue on to Kabul and “as much of the rest of 
Afghanistan as possible.” The Taliban claimed to have 4000 paid fight-
ers, 100 operational tanks, 11 MIG fighters, and nine transport heli-
copters. The source of funding was still a major question for the United 
States. “The apparent gap between obvious sources of funding and 
expenditures suggests to our interlocutors that the Taliban have other 
benefactors,” wrote Holzman (1995a). The Taliban were observed to 
be orderly and disciplined, at least, relative to the other Afghan factions. 
Two other features of the Taliban had become clear to the Americans. 
They practiced and intended to enforce a stark brand of Islam—in 
Kandahar they banned chess, marbles, and the presence of women out-
side of the home—and they were concerned about and opposed to 
“Iranian influence” (Holzman 1995a).

The United States was eager to speak to the Taliban and, using the 
United Nations as an intermediary (there was not yet a Taliban repre-
sentative in Peshawar), arranged what was perhaps the first direct meet-
ing between American officials and the Taliban. The meeting was held 
on 13 February 1995. The political officers from the US embassy in 
Islamabad and the US consulate in Peshawar traveled to Kandahar and 
met with seven Taliban officials including Kandahar mayor Maulavi 
Abul-Abbas and UN Affairs and Foreign Visitors chief Mullah Attiqullah.

The meeting began with a prayer for the “conversion of the unbe-
lievers.” Abul-Abbas informed the Americans that the Taliban’s goals 
were the disarmament of all the commanders, establishment of sharia, 
and a single government in Afghanistan. This meeting clearly established 
that the Taliban aimed to take over the country. Abul-Abbas said that, 
“Anyone who gets in our way will be crushed” (Monjo 1995a).

The Taliban representatives were much less forthcoming with infor-
mation than in subsequent meetings, though that could be because they 
did not have answers to the Americans’ questions. One focus of US/
Taliban relations was established in this very first meeting—the issue of 
opium poppy crops in the country that was the world’s leading supplier 
of opium. The US offered the Taliban participation in a counter-narcot-
ics training program, but the Taliban declined. “The Taliban shura will 
not let the people grow drugs,” said Abul-Abbas (Monjo 1995a). This 
statement was met with some opposition by other Taliban present and 
the mayor walked it back and pointed out that it was an economic issue 
and economic alternatives were needed before more could be done to 

16  J. crIstol

stop poppy growth. The mayor did agree to further discussion with the 
US on this issue. The comment at the end of the memorandum of the 
conversation says, “The overall impression was one of disingenuity and a 
degree of deception” (Monjo 1995a).

The two sides met again just days later in Peshawar. A still-classified 
source contacted the embassy in Islamabad and said that a still-classified 
senior Taliban official was in town for introductory meetings with the 
UN and other “friendly elements.” The official met with the consulate’s 
political officer on 17 February 1995. He asked that the meeting remain 
confidential as the Taliban were wary of being perceived to be influenced 
by outsiders, but the US was, “An important and unbiased friend.” The 
participants in the meeting remain classified (Monjo 1995b).

The Taliban official described the structure of the Taliban and men-
tioned that the three most important people were Mullah Omar, Haji 
Bashar, and Kandahar governor Mohammed Hassan. There was a “high 
shura” of eight, and a 22 member shura. He said that the Taliban’s 
goal was to disarm and unify Afghanistan. There could be elections in 
the future, but the Taliban shura would decide who could run in the 
elections. The US asked about drug eradication and he said that, in his 
home district, the Taliban had told the opium growers that they could 
no longer grow opium. On the subject of the United States, he said that, 
“The Taliban want very good relations with the US, particularly since 
the US had been so helpful in the jihad… The Taliban realize that the 
US and UN do not want to do anything but help the Afghans.” The 
US official noticed that the Talib was “clearly well disposed towards 
the United States” (Monjo 1995b). This was a nice change in tone 
from the previous meeting and seemed to establish that the Taliban 
were not hostile to the United States. Assistant Secretary of State for 
South Asia Robin Raphel (1995, par. 9) testified to the Senate Foreign 
Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs that 
the Taliban’s intentions were “unclear,” but “its leadership has expressed 
support in principle for a peaceful political process.”

The Taliban continued to expand their control of Afghanistan. On 
3 September 1995, they took control of Shinand Air Base in Farah 
Province, and by the next day, the Taliban had taken the city of Herat. 
While months earlier, the Taliban claimed to have 4000 troops in total, 
according to an American citizen in Herat, there were now 3000–4000 
troops in Herat alone. The Taliban take-over was described as “extremely 
well-disciplined and organized.” The Taliban forces paid for anything 


they took from the market, and doubled the salary of the public serv-
ants in Herat. The Taliban behaved in a “modest and dignified fashion.” 
Omar addressed the city and was again described as “clearly uneducated” 
and without charisma. The Taliban were welcomed due to the prospects 
for stability and the belief that the US and UN backed them (Holzman 
1995b). In fact, prominent anti-Taliban Afghans, like future foreign 
minister Abdullah Abdullah, believed that the United States was prop-
ping up the Taliban (Gannon 2005, p. 3). That belief was not unique to 
Afghans, Moscow and Tehran both assumed that the US supported the 
Taliban (Christopher 1996). Local Tajiks also believed that the US was 
arming the Taliban, and saw early visits between US and Taliban offi-
cials as corroborating evidence of that support. Kazakh diplomats were 
alleged to “believe the United States will recognize the Taliban regime 
because Washington seeks a pro-US regime in Kabul and less Russian 
and Iranian influence in Afghanistan” (Deutch 1996). The Kazakhs 
believed that other countries would follow America’s lead in recognizing 
the Taliban.

Even the popular press acknowledged the importance of stability. 
John Lloyd (1996, p. 22) wrote in the New Statesman, “Afghanistan’s 
Taliban regime is cruel and unsavory, but it could help end two dec-
ades of murderous chaos. It is hard to see a group as ruthless and as 
repressive as the Taliban regime, which has taken power in Afghanistan, 
as a source of stability. But it may be one.” In response to the chorus 
of voices claiming that Taliban stability was preferable to the chaos of 
the past, Lara Paul, writing in Peace Magazine (1997, p. 14), dissented, 
writing, “I doubt that Afghan women were asked for their opinion. For 
them, there is no peace.” It had become clear that the Taliban’s treat-
ment of women was horrifying and unacceptable. However, the Taliban 
had diverging views on the treatment of women. Herat governor Yar 
Mohammed said that he would reopen schools for girls, but he was over-
ruled by Kandahar (Kunsman 1996).

As the Taliban’s military gains continued, the US hoped to bring 
them onboard with the UN political process. Many of the Taliban lead-
ership were favorable to the UN plan for a coalition government, but 
Omar was opposed to a coalition and to the UN plan. Omar also had 
bigger concerns than the United States. He was concerned about a 
potential conflict with Iran and the Taliban placed “rocket launchers and 
artillery” on the Iranian border. The Taliban captured Iranian infiltrators 
and “told the Iranians that we are fully prepared to go inside Iran and 

18  J. crIstol

fight” (Kunsman 1996). Tension with Iran was one constant in an incon-
sistent and rapidly changing Taliban leadership.

As their advance continued, it became clear that the Taliban was 
concerned about how they were perceived in the United States. In 
April 1996, Raphel met with six Taliban leaders including Chief of 
Information and Culture Maulavi Amir Khan Mottaqi, who asked 
Raphel “to help improve their image in the international community” 
and asked that she “tell President Clinton and the West that we are not 
bad people.” This was noted as a “concern about their image” that was 
“previously absent.” The Taliban also “denied being human rights vio-
lators” (Simons 1996). Raphel did believe that the US should engage 
with the Taliban and told other UN member states that, “It is not in the 
interests of Afghanistan or any of us here that the Taliban be isolated” 
(Farrow 2018, p. 29). At that time, the US had no intention of isolating 
the Taliban and made every effort to reach out and discuss a wide range 
of issues.

The United States government was both readily aware that the 
Taliban could take over the embittered country and tacitly supportive 
of its so doing. President Rabbani had been unable to marshal popular 
support or to exert domestic sovereignty. In fact, a cable from the US 
Embassy in Islamabad to Secretary Christopher referred to the legitimacy 
of the Rabbani government as “highly questionable” (Simons 1996). 
The United States Government was still hoping that the civil war could 
be stopped and that a negotiated settlement could be reached between 
the Rabbani government, the Taliban, and the other armed factions that 
would later coalesce into the Northern Alliance, though it recognized 
the difficult task at hand (Simons 1996).

Raphel returned to Washington to testify before the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian 
Affairs. She discussed the three major interests of the United States in 
Afghanistan. First, she cited regional stability, “We seek a negotiated 
peace in Afghanistan that would end its role as a battleground” (Raphel 
1996, pp. 326–327). Second, she cited terrorism and narcotics, though 
narcotics formed the bulk of her statement on the issues. Third were 
humanitarian issues; but, “The common thread of all of our interests 
in Afghanistan is the need to restore stability” (Raphel 1996, pp. 326–
327). Because the Taliban were seen as a potential source of stability, 
the US was open to exploring the relationship and determining if peace 
could finally be achieved in Afghanistan.


In 1996, the United States needed a policy to govern its interaction 
with the Taliban. The goal was a “broad-based government” and the 
policy was, effectively, neutrality. “We will work with whatever govern-
ment may eventually emerge in Kabul, holding it strictly accountable to 
international norms of conduct,” wrote R.L. Chew (circa. 1996). The 
United States Senate expressed its own view of events in Afghanistan 
on 28 June 1996. Colorado Senator Hank Brown submitted a resolu-
tion that stated that the resolution of the conflict in Afghanistan should 
be a “top priority” for the United States. This policy was just as Raphel 
and Afghanistan Country Officer Ronald McMullen articulated in 
the Harvard International Review (1995, pars. 13–15), “US policy in 
Afghanistan has focused on promoting a peaceful political process and 
favors no Afghan faction, party, movement, or individual…. [the] United 
States will work with whatever government emerges in Kabul, holding 
it strictly accountable to international norms of conduct.” The lack of 
a functioning government allowed for a profusion of terrorist training 
camps, which the US knew existed in Afghanistan as early as 1995, and 
a major increase in opium production. The proliferation of terrorism and 
narcotics is something that could not be addressed without stability in 

The United States had another interest in the stability of Afghanistan. 
Many sources argue that US tacit support for the Taliban was due 
to the American oil company Unocal’s interest in building a pipe-
line through Afghanistan. Unocal had a plan to construct a 1040 mile 
long, 42′′ diameter pipeline from Chardzhou, Turkmenistan through 
Afghanistan to the Pakistani coast capable of carrying 1 million barrels 
per day (Maresca 1998). The documentary evidence does not bear out 
that the pipeline was the prevailing reason for early tacit support for the 
Taliban.4 Moreover, it was more important to the Taliban than it was to 
the United States. There are very few references to the pipeline in offi-
cial sources, and those references are to the positive and negative political 
ramifications of a pipeline.

In a meeting in Moscow with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Albert 
Chernyshev, Raphel said, “The United States Government now hopes 
that peace in the region will facilitate US business interests like the pro-
posed Unocal gas pipeline” (Pickering 1996). This would have the effect 
of bypassing Iran and potentially harming their oil production and econ-
omy, something Iran was keenly aware of. On 7 July 1997, a still-clas-
sified source said to the US embassy in Islamabad that, “A specific 

20  J. crIstol

source of anger for Iran… is their belief that the US is strongly backing 
the Taliban as a way to ensure that Unocal is able to build the oil and 
gas pipelines connecting central and south Asia through Afghanistan” 
(Simons 1997b). In a later document, a still-classified source says that 
Unocal had to consider the political and regional repercussions of any of 
its decisions in light of the “politically-charged” environment between 
Iran and Pakistan: “Every business decision Unocal or any other com-
pany considers in this region has to be carefully reviewed for its poten-
tial international repercussions” (Simons 1997a). And so, in that sense, 
Washington could not help but be involved; but there is no evidence 
to suggest that the US government put Unocal’s interests over the 
American, or even Afghan, national interest.

The Taliban advance continued and, in the Taliban’s success, Mullah 
Omar saw the hand of God. In an extremely rare public appearance, on 
4 April 1996, Mullah Omar visited the Shrine of the Cloak inside the 
Friday Mosque in Kandahar. The shrine housed a cloak said to have been 
worn by the Prophet Mohammed. Omar put on the cloak and made the 
controversial decision to declare himself “King of the Faithful,” the high-
est title in Islam (Anderson 2002, par. 14). His decision was supported 
by an election held by 1200 ulema in Kandahar between 20 March and 4 
April 1996 (Rubin 1998, pars. 28–29).

Omar’s declaration alienated many Muslim states just when the 
Taliban were poised to make a major victory (Gannon 2005, pp. 
42–43). On 27 September 1996, the Taliban took Kabul and toppled 
the Burhanuddin Rabbani government. The Taliban established a gov-
ernment in Kabul with Mullah Mohammed Rabbani (no relation) as its 
head of government. Mullah Omar would be head of state and remain 
in Kandahar. Now that the Taliban controlled Afghanistan’s capital, the 
majority of its territory, and the bulk of the population, it could set out 
on the task of convincing other states that the Taliban should be recog-
nized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. There was only one 
problem: Osama bin Laden had moved to Afghanistan.

1.  “Mullah” is an amorphous term that indicates the person is a learned reli-

gious person or cleric, but there are no set qualifications or requirements 
to earn the title. It is a title of respect and not necessarily of achievement. 
“Maulavi” typically connotes someone with a formal religious qualification.


2.  “Madrasa” literally means “school,” but in the Afghanistan/Pakistan 
region the term is typically used to describe an elementary or second-
ary school that provides only religious education. Haji Bashar’s madrasa 
belonged to the pan-Islamic, India-based, Deobandi school of Sunni 
Islam, which “exalted extreme austerity and the subjugation of women” 
(Filkins 2001, par. 47).

3.  Ehsanullah Ehsan was killed in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997 (Rashid 2010,  
p. 100).

4.  The pipeline issue is a major focus of Rashid (2010). It is interesting to 
note that Ambassador Thomas Simons (1998b) referred to Rashid in a 
cable as “somewhat conspiratorial-minded.”

Anderson, Jon L. 2002. After the Revolution: The City of Kandahar, Post-

Taliban, is Full of Reminders That the Taliban Were Not What They Seemed 
to Be. The New Yorker, 28 January 2002, 77(45). Web.

Brown, Hank. 1996. Senate Resolution 275. 28 June 1996. 104th Congress, 
2nd Session, United States Senate.

Chew R. L. circa. 1996. Pakistan–Afghanistan Relations. US Department of 
State, document accessed at the National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Christopher, Warren. 1996. Pak Foreign Minister Asks US Cooperation on 
Afghanistan [Secretary of State Christopher to US Embassy Islamabad]. 21 
February 1996. US Department of State, document accessed at the National 
Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Deutch, John M. 1996. Central Asian Reaction to Taliban’s Takeover of Kabul. 
9 October 1996. Central Intelligence Agency document accessed at the 
National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Farrow, Ronan. 2018. War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of 
American Influence. New York: W. W. Norton.

Filkins, Dexter. 2001. The Legacy of the Taliban Is a Sad and Broken Land. New 
York Times, 31 December 2001. Web.

Filkins, Dexter. 2008. The Forever War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Holzman, John. 1995a. The Taliban: What We’ve Heard [from US Embassy 

Islamabad to Secretary of State Christopher]. 26 January 1995. US 
Department of State, document accessed at the National Security Archive, 
Washington, DC.

Holzman, John. 1995b. Eyewitness to the Fall of Herat Says Taliban are 
Winning Hearts and Minds—For Now [from US Embassy Islamabad to 
Secretary of State Christopher]. 18 September 1995. US Department of 

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Kunsman, Eric. 1996. Afghanistan: Taliban Official Says Divisions Within 
Movement Growing; Predicts ‘Fight with Iran’ [from US Embassy Islamabad 
to Secretary of State Christopher]. 19 February 1996. US Department of 

Lloyd, John. 1996. John Lloyd. New Statesman, 11 October 1996, 9(424), 22.
MacFarquhar, Emily. 1995. The Rise of the Taliban. U.S. News & World Report, 

6 March 1995, 119(9), 64–65.
Maresca, John J. 1998. Testimony to the US Congress House of 

Representatives, Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on 
Asia and the Pacific. 12 February 1998. 105th Congress Washington, DC.

Monjo, John Cameron. 1994. The Taliban—Who Knows What the Movement 
Means? [from US Embassy Islamabad to Secretary of State Christopher]. 28 
November 1994. US Department of State, document accessed at the National 
Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Monjo, John Cameron. 1995a. Meeting with the Taliban in Kandahar: More 
Questions than Answers [from US Embassy Islamabad to Secretary of 
State Christopher]. 15 February 1995. US Department of State, document 
accessed at the National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Monjo, John Cameron. 1995b. Finally, A Talkative Talib: Origins and 
Membership of the Religious Students’ Movement [from US Embassy 
Islamabad to Secretary of State Christopher]. 20 February 1995. US 
Department of State, document accessed at the National Security Archive, 
Washington, DC.

Paul, Lara. 1997. Women in Danger in Afghanistan. Peace Magazine, 
September/October 1997, 13(5), 14.

Pickering, Thomas R. 1996. A/S Raphel Consultations with Deputy FM 
Chernyshev [from US Embassy Moscow to Secretary of State Christopher]. 
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Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Raphel, Robin. 1995. Statement by Robin Raphel, Assistant Secretary of State 
for South Asian Affairs, before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on 
Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. 7 March 1995. Document accessed at 
Mount Holyoke College website.

Raphel, Robin. 1996. U.S. Interests in and Policy Toward Afghanistan: [6 June 
1996] Statement before the Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian 
Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. U.S. Department of State 
Dispatch, 17 June 1996, 7(25), 326–327.

Raphel, Robin, and Ronald McMullen. 1995. Mired in Conflict. Harvard 
International Review 18 (1): 40–43.

Rashid, Ahmed. 2010. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in 
Central Asia, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.


Rubin, Barnett. 1998. Testimony on the Situation in Afghanistan before the 
United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign 
Relations, 8 October 1998. Web.

Schulz, John J., and Linda Schulz. 1999. The Darkest of Ages: Afghan Women 
Under the Taliban. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 5 (3): 

Security Council Committee Concerning Afghanistan Designates Funds, 
Financial Resources of Taliban. 2001. United Nations Press Release, 13 April 
2001, SC/6844.

Simons, Thomas W. 1996. A/S Raphel Discusses Afghanistan [from US Embassy 
Islamabad to Secretary of State Christopher]. 22 April 1996. US Department 
of State, document accessed at the National Security Archive, Washington, 

Simons, Thomas W. 1997a. Afghanistan and Sectarian Violence Contribute to 
a Souring of Pakistan’s Relations with Iran [from US Embassy Islamabad to 
Secretary of State Albright]. 13 March 1997. US Department of State, docu-
ment accessed at the National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Simons, Thomas W. 1997b. Afghanistan: Observers Report Uptick in Support 
for Anti-Taliban Factions by Iran [from US Embassy Islamabad to Secretary 
of State Albright]. 7 July 1997. US Department of State, document accessed 
at the National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Simons, Thomas W. 1997c. Afghanistan: Taliban Decision-Making and 
Leadership Structure [from US Embassy Islamabad to Secretary of State 
Albright]. 30 December 1997. US Department of State, document accessed 
at the National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Simons, Thomas W. 1998a. Afghanistan: [Redacted] Describes Pakistan’s 
Current Thinking [from US Embassy Islamabad to Secretary of State 
Albright]. 9 March 1998. US Department of State, document accessed at the 
National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Simons, Thomas W. 1998b. Bad News for Pak Afghan Policy: GOP Support for 
the Taliban Appears to Be Getting Stronger [from US Embassy Islamabad to 
Secretary of State Albright]. 1 July 1998. US Department of State, document 
accessed at the National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Smyth, William Henry. 1994. New Fighting and New Forces in Kandahar [from 
US Consulate Peshawar to Secretary of State Christopher]. 3 November 
1994. US Department of State, document accessed at the National Security 
Archive, Washington, DC.


Abstract  The Taliban took Kabul on 17 September 1996 and had a 
legitimate claim to be the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban 
wanted a good relationship with the United States for many reasons 
including fear of Iran and Russia. The US and the Taliban met regu-
larly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the US. On 8 November 1996, the 
Taliban formally requested diplomatic recognition from the United 
States. Washington had four major concerns regarding Afghanistan: 
stability and ending the Taliban/Northern Alliance conflict; drug traf-
ficking; women’s rights; and the presence of Osama bin Laden and his 
Al Qaeda terrorist network. This chapter looks at the discussions and 
high-level meetings between the United States and the Taliban from the 
fall of Kabul until the 7 August 1998 Al Qaeda attacks in Kenya and 
Tanzania—a time period during which concern about both women’s 
rights and terrorism grew dramatically.

Keywords  Afghanistan · Diplomatic history · Osama bin Laden 
Taliban · United Nations · United States foreign policy

The Taliban took Kabul on 17 September 1996. They now had a 
legitimate claim as the government of Afghanistan. In a meeting at 
the American embassy in Islamabad, Taliban Deputy Foreign Affairs 
Advisor Abdul Jalil told his American hosts that the official name of the 
new government was the “Afghan Taliban Government” and said that 


The Taliban Take Kabul and a New Friend 
Moves to Kandahar

© The Author(s) 2019 

26  J. crIstol

Kabul would remain the administrative capital of Afghanistan, but that 
Kandahar would serve as the capital of the Taliban movement (Simons 
1996a). The Taliban took every opportunity to voice their fond feel-
ings about the United States. The US had supported Afghanistan in its 
struggle against the Soviet Union only seven years earlier, and there was 
plenty of goodwill. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright wrote in 
her 2005 (p. 461) memoir that, “In those years, Taliban leaders didn’t 
express hostility towards America; in fact they thanked the United States 
for its role in ousting the Soviets.” The Taliban never overtly nor cov-
ertly turned on the United States, but their naivety and intransigence, 
combined with Mullah Omar’s growing relationship with Osama bin 
Laden, who had returned to Afghanistan and opened a series of terror-
ist training camps near the Afghan city Khost, would eventually make a 
good relationship impossible.

The CIA’s 30 September 1996 “National Intelligence Daily” provides 
an analysis of the Taliban’s victory. In its discussion of the Taliban polit-
ical leadership, the still-classified author writes, “US officials who have 
met with Taliban leaders have been struck by their lack of sophistication 
and ignorance of administrative processes.” They have “no discernible 
economic policy beyond Koranic injunctions against usury” and they 
have not closed “camps associated with Osama bin Laden.” The report 
was not entirely pessimistic about US/Taliban relations, saying that there 
was “no evidence that a Taliban government would be systematically 
unfriendly to US interests” (Deutch 1996).

The subject of recognition was also discussed in the report. Pakistan 
was thought to be close to recognizing the Taliban government, but was 
concerned about Iran’s reaction, and the author noted that the Taliban 
government would soon want the US to recognize it as well. Ultimately, 
the CIA author’s opinion was prescient. They believed that, “Dialogue 
likely [would] founder on profound differences” and the Taliban’s 
“willingness to risk losing aid from international organizations over its 
treatment of women hints at the group’s inflexibility” (Deutch 1996). 
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Roy Gutman (2008, p. 125) writes 
that, “Omar’s messianic worldview was built around the fatwas of sympa-
thetic religious scholars and had no room for political compromise.” The 
US did not realize just how inflexible he would be, perhaps because, for 
now, there were good reasons to work together.

It was not only latent affection that made the Taliban favorably dis-
posed toward closer relations with the United States but the Taliban also 


feared both Russia and Iran. Steve Coll, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 
book Ghost Wars (2004, pp. 336–340), writes that the Taliban “fully 
expected to end up in a war with Iran.” The Taliban turned down a CIA 
offer of between $5–8 million for their 53 stinger missiles as they antici-
pated needing them in that war (Coll 2004, pp. 336–340).

The Taliban had good reason to fear Iran. In their takeover of the 
city Mazar-i-Sharif, the Taliban murdered between 9 and 11 Iranian 
diplomats (reliable sources differ on the exact number), who they claim 
aided the Northern Alliance in the region. Regardless of the accuracy 
of that claim, the murder was a clear and direct violation of the 1961 
Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.1 In late August 1999, a 
truck bomb went off outside Omar’s home. The bomb killed two of his 
brothers and his brother-in-law (Gutman 2008, p. 186). The Taliban 
suspected that Iranian agents planted the bomb in retaliation for the inci-
dent in Mazar-i-Sharif (Gannon 2005, p. 76). Taliban Deputy Foreign 
Affairs Advisor Abdul Jalil voiced his concern that Iran, “harbors sev-
eral thousand anti-Taliban Afghans, who it may use to invade” (Simons 
1996a). Taliban concerns were at least partially validated when Iran 
amassed 70,000 troops on the Iran/Afghanistan border.

Iran had worries of its own. Tehran was concerned that the Taliban 
was “part of the US plan to encircle and isolate Iran” (Rubin 1998, par. 
66). In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then 
Council on Foreign Relations Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin (1998, 
par. 2) said that, “War, or at least military action [between Iran and the 
Taliban], cannot be ruled out.” Iran was also concerned that the Taliban 
would allow the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq terrorist group to operate from its 

The Taliban victory in Kabul was quickly followed by victories that  
led to their control of 90% of Afghan territory. The US needed to fig-
ure out a response to this new reality in Kabul. Washington moved to 
increase contacts with the new Taliban government and to work with 
them on issues of mutual (and of course American) interest. Secretary 
of State Warren Christopher sent instructions to US Ambassador to 
Pakistan Thomas W. Simons in Islamabad. He authorized Simons to send 
representatives to meet with the Taliban in Kabul and to “demonstrate 
[Washington’s] willingness to deal with them as the new authorities in 
Kabul.” The US diplomats said that they hoped, “[The Taliban would] 
propose soon an envoy to represent [its] government in Washington” and 
that the State Department would decline to renew visas for the existing, 

28  J. crIstol

non-Taliban, Afghan diplomats in the United States. Washington was also 
willing to reopen its embassy in Kabul, closed since 1979, “Subject to 
security concerns” (Christopher 1996a).

The US did not ultimately reopen its embassy in Kabul until the fall of 
the Taliban in 2002. However, it is important to note that if the US had 
reopened its embassy, that action would not have constituted recognition 
of the Taliban government. Diplomatic recognition is not the same as 
the opening of diplomatic relations. Even the use of the term “interim 
government” or the phrase “we recognize that the Taliban now control 
Kabul and much of the country,” does not construe de facto recognition 
of the Taliban government. The United States does not recognize the 
concept of “de facto recognition.”3

Christopher (1996a) told Ambassador Simons that special empha-
sis should be put on the historic friendship between the US and 
Afghanistan—“The United States has had a long history of friendship 
with the Afghan people, and we look forward to a future of the same.” 
The overall tone Christopher wished to convey to the Taliban was one of 
friendship and cooperation. There was no difference between the public 
and private tone of the State Department toward the Taliban.

In multiple press conferences, State Department spokesmen Nicolas 
Burns and Glyn Davies voiced the Clinton Administration’s willingness 
to work with the Taliban. Davies (1996a) said that the administration 
“hope[s] that [the Taliban takeover of Kabul] presents an opportunity 
for a process of national reconciliation to begin.” The hope the adminis-
tration had for the Taliban was so high that when asked, “This group—
this Islamic fundamentalist group that has taken Afghanistan by force 
and summarily executed the former President, the United States is hold-
ing out on the possibility of relations?” Davies (1996b) responded, “I’m 
not going to prejudge where we’re going to go with Afghanistan…. It’s 
clear that the Taliban are in charge of Kabul…. Our call on them is to 
use their new position to move to a process of national reconciliation.” 
State Department responses to questions about the relationship with the 
Taliban scarcely deviated from this line throughout this period.

The United States might have been hopeful about the Taliban and 
desired good relations, but there were four major issues standing in the 
way both of American recognition of the Taliban government and of a 
normal relationship: ending the ongoing conflict between the Taliban 
and the Northern Alliance and returning stability to Afghanistan; the 
opium trade; human rights, especially the rights of women and girls; 


and terrorism, especially the presence of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin 
Laden. Secretary Christopher (1996a) told Ambassador Simons to ask 
the Taliban if they “know the location of ex-Saudi financier and radical 
Islamist Osama bin Laden…. His continued presence here would not, 
we believe, serve Afghanistan’s interests.” There is no indication that any 
American official yet understood how obstinate the Taliban would be 
about these issues.

The United States brought up women’s rights in the regular meetings 
between Taliban and American officials. Nicolas Burns said in a press 
conference that the US “press[ed]… for women’s rights” in its regular 
meetings with the Taliban. However, the US was hesitant to issue any 
public condemnations of the Taliban, saying that generally the US cares 
about such things and that specifically “we will need to assess what hap-
pens in Kabul” (Burns 1996). There was hope that the US could forge 
a good relationship with the Taliban and thus be in a better position 
to moderate their practices, if not their actual views. The US was not 
unique in this regard; the United Nations did not take a forceful pub-
lic position against the Taliban’s treatment of woman either.4 Associated 
Press reporter Kathy Gannon (2005, p. 47) writes that the Taliban, 
“were actually seen as a good thing in that they were expected to put an 
end to the brutal fighting and lawlessness, and bring security to a deeply 
insecure nation.” The primary documents support her assertion.

Before the Taliban captured Kabul, there was no international reac-
tion to their restrictive measures against women. Gannon (2005, p. 47) 
writes that, “The Taliban were consistent, and from the very beginning, 
there could be no mistake about their attitude toward women. But the 
international community didn’t care.” Gannon (2005, p. 47) rightly 
points out that women did not do well under the previous govern-
ment. However, the situation was much worse under the Taliban. The 
Taliban’s treatment of women is “arguably the worst in all recorded his-
tory” (Schulz and Schulz 1999, p. 237). The Taliban were educated only 
in Arabic translations of the Koran, a language they did not understand 
and thus they were highly suggestible to the ideas put forward by their 
teachers. The Taliban forbade virtually everything, from board games 
to phones to cameras. Women were effectively barred from leaving the 
house except with a male relative. The windows of houses with women 
living in them were required to paint the windows black. When women 
did leave the home, they were required to be covered from head to toe 

30  J. crIstol

in burqas. The burqa itself could cost up to three months of the average 
wage (Schulz and Schulz 1999, p. 243).

As the Taliban consolidated power in Afghanistan and made their 
first bid to be recognized as that country’s legitimate government, their 
treatment of women and girls began to gather attention in the United 
States and internationally. US Permanent Representative to the United 
Nations Madeline Albright spoke at a private home to the Women’s 
Foreign Policy Group on 19 November 1996. In her speech, she said 
that, “In Afghanistan a rebel force called the Taliban has seized con-
trol of half the country. Along the way it has issued decrees that would 
indoors. Uneducated and invisible.… Women and girls are being denied 
the chance to work, to go to school and to participate freely in the day 
to day life of their communities. The Taliban’s great claim is that the 
harshness of their rule creates stability and diminishes crime…. The rule 
of law depends not on terror, but on respect between the governors 
and the governed, and the future of Afghanistan will indeed be grim…. 
That is why the UN Security Council voted last month, with strong 
United States support, to condemn the Taliban’s egregious violations of 
human rights and to urge a moderation of its policies” (Albright 1996,  
pp. 21–24). This resolution, UNSCR 1076, “denounce[d] the discrimi-
nation against girls and women and other violations of human rights and 
international humanitarian law in Afghanistan.”

In what was likely a deliberate choice of words, Albright referred 
to the Taliban as a “rebel group,” which explicitly meant that they 
could not yet be recognized as Afghanistan’s legitimate government. 
Moreover, it would be legal under international law to assist the recog-
nized government in its attempt to suppress the rebellion. UNSCR 1076 
did not go that far, and called on all states not to supply arms to any side 
nor interfere in “the internal affairs of Afghanistan.”

Women’s rights was an important issue for the American public, but 
for the State Department, Defense Department, and intelligence com-
munity, the presence of Osama bin Laden was clearly the most impor-
tant issue in US/Taliban relations. On 28 September 1996, the day 
after the Taliban took Bagram Air Base, Jalil had an hour-long conver-
sation with the political officer at the US Embassy in Islamabad. Jalil 
told his American interlocutor that Osama bin Laden was not in Taliban 
territory (Simons 1996a). That was true. Bin Laden was not invited 


to Afghanistan by the Taliban, nor had he met them during the jihad 
against the Soviet Union.

Osama bin Laden was expelled by Sudan and moved to Afghanistan 
on 19 May 1996 as the guest of a local warlord named Yunis Khalis 
(Filkins 2001, par. 51).5 The New York Times reported that he was 
first introduced to the Taliban by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence 
(ISI) and that bin Laden gave the Taliban an initial $3 million donation 
(LeVine and Bonner 1998, p. A6). Bin Laden did not yet live in Taliban-
controlled territory and US diplomats had probably spent more time 
with Taliban officials than had bin Laden.

The United States moved quickly to meet with the new rulers of 
Kabul. Deputy Foreign Minister Jalil visited Ambassador Simons’ 
Islamabad home on 7 October 1996. Jalil was there to deliver a personal 
message from Mullah Omar. He said that the Taliban thought highly 
of the United States and appreciated the help in the jihad against the 
Soviets, but, for domestic reasons, Omar asked that the relationship 
with the United States be kept “quiet and low key” (Simons 1996b). 
Afghanistan’s Shia population believed that the Taliban was created by 
the US, so Omar thought it best if the United Arab Emirates (UAE) 
and Saudi Arabia were the first countries to recognize the Taliban gov-
ernment.6 Jalil suggested that, “Acting Foreign Minister” Mullah 
Mohammed Ghaus, who had visited the US just a few months earlier, 
could meet with Simons at the embassy rather than at Simons’ home. 
This would make the meeting more official. Simons delivered his talk-
ing points. He told Jalil that the US wanted a broad-based government 
in Afghanistan and that Washington was “deeply concerned [about] 
due process and respect for basic human rights, especially relating to 
women” (Simons 1996b). Moreover, the Taliban’s treatment of women 
may impact their access to international aid. The conversation went well 
and Simons (1996b) noted in his report that the Taliban “may be more 
politically sophisticated than generally acknowledged.” Events would 
prove that they were not. Simons had planned to visit Kabul, Mazar-i-
Sharif, and Kandahar, but the Taliban put the visit on hold until after the 
UAE and Saudi Arabia recognized the Taliban (Simons 1996c).

By mid-October, the Taliban consolidated their gains over most 
of the country, but a 1996 report by Canada’s International Advisory 
Committee (IAC) claimed that they did not meet the standard of “effec-
tive control” necessary for recognition: “To achieve effective control 
throughout Afghanistan, [the] Taliban still must co-opt or neutralize the 

32  J. crIstol

military strongmen in the North.” The IAC wrote that, “Taliban lead-
ers will have to focus on … obtaining international recognition as the de 
facto government…. their main argument will be that as they exercise 
effective control over the government machinery, they can bring law and 
order and a degree of stability to the country not experienced for sev-
eral years.” TheIAC did not believe that the UN would seat the Taliban 
either, writing that, “The UN credentials committee… is unlikely to con-
sider any application by Taliban for a change in representation.” And if 
that wasn’t harsh enough, an unnamed Canadian government source 
said that the “Taliban does not have a clear grasp of the UN System 
or of what the UN stands for in terms of values” (“IAC Intelligence 
Assessment” 1996). This assessment was accurate.

The Taliban talked about recognition, but did not formally request 
recognition from the United States until an 8 November 1996 meet-
ing between Ambassador Simons and Acting Foreign Minister Ghaus. 
Ghaus was joined by Acting Reconstruction Minister Attiqullah, and 
Afghan Embassy Chargé d’Affairs Abdul Wahab; Simons was joined by 
two others.7 Ghaus voiced the Taliban’s strong desire for good relations 
with the United States both because the US was a former ally in the war 
against the USSR and because they perceived Russia and Iran to be the 
biggest strategic threats to the Taliban.8 He then made the case for rec-
ognition: “A government that controls a country’s territory is the legit-
imate government. Thus, the Taliban, which control over two-thirds of 
the country, should be recognized as the Afghan government.” This case 
was reasonable in theory, though two-thirds would be a low standard 
for “effective control.” Simons replied by praising the Afghan people: 
“We admired the Afghans’ freedom struggle, and were proud of our role 
in its success.” He had hoped that after the war against the Soviets, the 
Afghans would come together, but unfortunately they continued fight-
ing. Ghaus blamed the ongoing civil war on “interference by Russia, 
Iran, and India” (Simons 1996d).

This meeting may have been the first extended dialogue about Osama 
bin Laden between the US and the Taliban. Simons asked Ghaus about 
Osama bin Laden and told him that the US “received reports that he is 
in or near the Taliban-controlled city of Jalalabad” and that, “we hope 
he is not there with Taliban acquiescence.” Ghaus assured Simons that 
bin Laden was not in a Taliban-controlled area; but in his post-conver-
sation notes, Simons wrote that there is a “body of evidence increasingly 


tilting toward the conclusion that the Taliban are not being totally can-
did” (1996e). It is also possible that they did not know.

Simons said that the US position on the end of the conflict was that 
there should be a “genuine negotiation of a political settlement which 
respected the rights of all Afghans, including minorities and women.” 
Ghaus, betraying a lack of understanding of democracy, voiced his 
preference for a Northern Alliance surrender because, “In democra-
cies minorities must always submit to the will of the majority” and he 
believed that the ethnically Pashtun Taliban comprised the majority of 
Afghanistan’s population. Ghaus ended the meeting by saying, “We want 
the United States government to recognize the Taliban’s interim gov-
ernment” and that after the Taliban victory, we hope to “have reason 
to be grateful to the United States for its help.” Ghaus asked to send a 
delegation to the United States and said that any US delegations would 
be welcome in Afghanistan. Simons reported the tone of the meeting as 
“courteous and civil” (Simons 1996d).

The US continued to try to make inroads with the Taliban on the 
subjects of women’s rights and the presence of Osama bin Laden. On 
10 December 1996, two meetings were held in Pakistan between the 
United States and the Taliban. A still-classified source met with Assistant 
Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Robin Raphel, Afghanistan Desk 
Officer R.L. Chew, State Department South Asia expert Lee Coldren, 
and a still-classified American. In both meetings, the Americans brought 
up the Taliban’s treatment of women and pointed out that, “Women not 
working could lead to starvation for families” (Christopher 1996b).

Recognition was another topic of discussion at the meeting. The 
Americans asked about the structure of the Taliban government and said 
that there was a simple administration in place, but no bureaucracy and 
an “oral rather than written code.” Raphel replied that that was, “Not 
enough to constitute a government” (Christopher 1996b). The Taliban 
representative said that they would not seek the UN seat just yet, and 
a still-classified source pointed out that they had “major obstacles in 
gaining international recognition” (Christopher 1996b). It was true 
that the Taliban faced obstacles in gaining recognition, but those obsta-
cles were due to the result of recognition’s political nature more than 
due to the United Nations criteria for recognition of governments. The 
Taliban had at least as good a claim on recognition as does the govern-
ment of Somalia, which controls only 73% of Somalia’s territory. The 
source described the Taliban as divided between the mujahedeen, who 

34  J. crIstol

were worldly but had little influence, and the more influential madrasa 
students with ties to Pakistan (Christopher 1996b). Other new Taliban 
cared more about politics than they did religion or jihad.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the Taliban’s effort to be recognized 
was the nomination of UN Ambassador Albright to be the new Secretary 
of State on 6 December 1996. She had been vociferous in her denun-
ciations of the Taliban and now would oversee America’s relationship 
with the “rebel group.” In Secretary Christopher’s “lame duck” period, 
a flurry of meetings between the US and the Taliban took place.

US Deputy Chief of Mission in Islamabad John Holzman traveled 
to Afghanistan for three days of meetings. On 5 January, he met with 
Jalil and on 6 January, he met with Jalil, Deputy Foreign Minister Sher 
Mohammad Abbas Stanakzai and Mullah Mohammed Rabbani. Rabbani 
was the only Taliban leader with a large power base independent of 
Mullah Omar (Simons 1997h) and he was generally more moderate in 
his positions and his tone. Rabbani was the Taliban’s second-in-com-
mand and held the official positions of Governor of Kandahar and Head 
of the Council of Ministers. It was at these meetings that the Taliban 
first acknowledged that Osama bin Laden was their “guest.” They were 
keen to explain to Holzman that they did not support terrorism and told 
him that, “[bin Laden] has been asked not to carry out terrorist activities 
against other countries” (Hanson 1997). They took a similar approach 
to terrorist training camps. These could remain open and the people 
there could stay in them as “refugees,” but they “could not engage in 
hostilities” (Hanson 1997).

Rabbani and Stanakzai reiterated this point on 6 January.9 In 
response, Holzman pointed out that bin Laden was plotting against the 
Saudis, who are “friends of the Taliban” (Hanson 1997). Rabbani replied 
that bin Laden was “a refugee.” They had spoken to him and asked him 
not to carry out terrorist activities to which he agreed. Holzman told 
them that the US had information that bin Laden was indeed plotting 
terrorist activities. Rabbani reminded him that bin Laden promised 
that he would not do so. The almost-comical back-and-forth would 
be repeated in slow motion over the following years. And just in case 
Holzman did not get the message, a still-classified Taliban source met 
with Simons on 6 February and told him that the Taliban, “Won’t allow 
our territory to be used by Osama bin Laden for [terrorism]” (Simons 


Perhaps in an effort to reassure his American guests, Jalil said that 
bin Laden had been living in caves in Tora Bora, but the Taliban were 
suspicious about his activities. So, in order to keep a close eye on him, 
they told him he had to live “in an ordinary house” (Hanson 1997). 
Rabbani expressed what would become a long-standing Taliban posi-
tion—what Osama bin Laden did in the past was not their concern, the 
Taliban would have no issue with bin Laden unless he did something 
new. Holzman let his hosts know that the association with bin Laden was 
hurting the Taliban and that they “do not owe [him] anything” (Hanson 
1997). Osama bin Laden’s move from Tora Bora to Kandahar was not 
for America’s benefit, and it served to draw Mullah Omar and Osama bin 
Laden closer together. Bin Laden showered largess on his new friends, 
building “a grand mosque… and constructing key roads” (Rashid 2009, 
p. 15). The two met regularly and even became fishing buddies (Wright 
2007, p. 326).

The next day, at a meeting in Kabul with Acting Head of the Interim 
Shura (and future foreign minister) Mullah Mohammed Hassan, 
Holzman heard another of what would become a standard Taliban 
talking point. “The Taliban cannot expel [bin Laden],” Hassan told 
Holzman, citing the tribal code of Pashtunwali that governs the treat-
ment of guests in Pashtun culture.10

Holzman concluded that, “The Taliban appear to have concluded 
that it is in their interest to give [bin Laden] refuge.” It was possible 
bin Laden was paying off “some individual Taliban” and “how hard 
they may have pressed him not to commit terrorist acts is unknown.” 
Holzman suggested to Washington that the US “urge Saudi and 
Egyptian authorities to take a more active approach with the Taliban on 
bin Laden” (Hanson 1997). Though his Taliban hosts told Holzman 
that US authorities could inspect the terrorist training camps, those visits 
were repeatedly delayed by the Taliban.

After Holzman’s trip to Afghanistan, the US embassy in Islamabad 
began planning for Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s first trip 
to Islamabad. In his “scene-setter,” for the new Secretary, Holzman 
recapped his recent trips to Afghanistan. He reported that things seemed 
to be going reasonably well in Taliban-controlled areas, “Markets are 
full by Afghan standards…. [and] small pharmacies… are well stocked 
with mostly Pakistani drugs.” The quality of life had become better in 
Kandahar since the Taliban took over. Holzman reported that, “Life 
is not so bad and the people of Kandahar would be crazy not to prefer 

36  J. crIstol

Taliban theocracy to factional warfare.” But Kandahar was a conservative 
city anyway, and the Taliban’s light touch in Kandahar might have been 
the result of the need not to alienate their base of support. In Kabul and 
Herat, the Taliban’s rule was “harsh and oppressive” and getting worse. 
There was already a backlash in Kabul and Mullah Omar took steps “to 
create a kinder, gentler occupation,” cracking down on Taliban beating 
people for non-conformity (Simons 1997b).

Holzman also brought up the recognition issue, writing to Albright 
that, “We’ve also heard bucketsful from the Taliban that they, as the 
rulers of Kabul, haven’t been recognized as Afghanistan’s government” 
(Simons 1997b). They were especially upset that the UN Credentials 
Committee refused to seat them. Holzman was concerned that the 
Taliban were becoming disillusioned with the West and that the more 
radical members of the Taliban were gaining power (Simons 1997b). 
Filkins (2008, p. 29) wrote, “More than anything, what served to bother 
the Taliban leaders… was the refusal of the United Nations to extend 
them formal recognition even though they’d conquered 90% of the 

In the United States, concern for Afghanistan’s women grew and 
the issue was becoming a cause célèbre among celebs. In Washington, 
Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, who would later become the 
chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, introduced 
a resolution on 7 February that expressed “concern for the deteriora-
tion of human rights in Afghanistan” and emphasized “the need for a 
peaceful political settlement” (1997). The resolution said that Congress 
was “disturbed” by the restrictions the Taliban placed on women. It 
“deplored” the Taliban’s human rights violations and “condemned” the 
discrimination against women and girls. It called on US President Bill 
Clinton to “call for an end to discrimination against women and girls 
in Afghanistan” and to ask Pakistan to do wh