US Should Rethink Taliban Sanctions Strategy, Former Pakistan Ambassador Says
The U.S. should rethink sanctions against the Taliban and potentially Afghanistan, which likely will not work as intended and could lead to severe humanitarian consequences, said Husain Haqqani, an expert with the Hudson Institute and Pakistan’s former ambassador to the U.S. Haqqani said sanctions against the Taliban only “threaten to compound the already dire challenges of Afghan citizens,” adding that the country will soon run out of fuel and will need to import food. “With the serious potential for a nationwide humanitarian crisis,” Haqqani wrote in an Aug. 27 opinion piece in The Washington Post, “it would make sense to rethink the blunt instrument of sanctions.”
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Haqqani said the U.S. and others should consider developing a new sanctions regime “that clearly and specifically targets individuals” who support terrorism while “accepting that providing aid to Afghan citizens will require some interaction with the Taliban.” He said past U.S. counterterrorism sanctions regimes have failed, including restrictions introduced after 9/11 that “failed to prevent the Taliban from waging a 20-year insurgency and emerging as Afghanistan’s rulers again.” A new strategy is needed, he said.
“The entirely reasonable desire to sanction the group must be balanced against the scope of the humanitarian challenges now facing the Afghan people,” Haqqani said. “Sanctions have their place, but in some cases, they should be modified to save lives.” Other experts have also argued for some U.S. collaboration with the Taliban to deliver humanitarian aid to Afghan citizens (see 2108260055).