Disengaging with the Taliban was a mistake

We have a duty to the Afghan people, many of whom feel utterly betrayed by the West’s abrupt departure.

Afghanistan is a country most of us would rather forget. I learnt that the hard way a couple of years ago when I returned there and suggested that the West should re-engage with the Taliban. Few wanted to listen. 

After two decades of war, enormous cost and profound human sacrifice, the prevailing view was simple: we failed, we left and it was time to move on. I returned from Afghanistan convinced a Kandahar–Kabul divide was emerging, between authority and administration, belief and reality. The BBC now confirms that this fault line is hardening and may soon come to a head.

The Taliban is not a single, unified Sharia authority, but a movement split between two competing visions for Afghanistan’s future. On one side stands the supreme leader, Akhundzada, ruling by decree from Kandahar. Remote, deeply distrustful of the modern world, and surrounded by hardline ideologues, he seeks isolation and ideological purity. He shut down the internet, seeing only Western corruption in global connection. His edicts, particularly those banning girls’ education and restricting women’s rights, dominate international headlines and harden global opposition.

On the other side are the Kabul-based ministers who, in practice, run the country day-to-day. They switched the internet back on. They manage the economy, keep basic services functioning, and attempt, cautiously, to engage with the outside world. Let’s be clear: they are still hardliners. But by Taliban standards, they are pragmatists. They have seen the world and understand Afghanistan cannot function without trade, connectivity, education, including for women, and economic growth. 

Their argument is simple. If Afghanistan is to endure, it must not retreat but engage and evolve – eventually towards something closer to a Gulf-style state than a sealed emirate. Isolation will deepen suffering, fracture the movement and push Afghanistan into dependency, most likely on China, while opening space for extremist groups to flourish.

That internal tension was visible on the ground. In some communities I saw cautious tolerance and local flexibility. In others, ruthless enforcement was accompanied by fear. There were two Afghanistans co-existing uneasily. But this balance will not hold. One vision will prevail. Wise engagement is not about legitimising the Taliban or abandoning our principles. It is about recognising where influence still exists and where it will disappear entirely if we continue to disengage. It is also about acknowledging a duty to the Afghan people, many of whom feel utterly betrayed by the West’s abrupt departure.

China is in Afghanistan for one reason: minerals. Vast reserves of lithium, copper and rare earths, critical to modern industry and military power, make the country strategically irresistible. Disengagement does not keep China out. It clears the way. With the West absent, Beijing faces little competition in turning Afghanistan into a resource rich vassal state.

The human cost of isolation is equally stark. Around half of children under 11 receive no formal education at all. Not because of ideology alone, but because in many areas the schools simply do not exist. Without international support, a generation is growing up illiterate, unskilled, and cut off from any economic future, fertile ground for extremist recruitment.

Then there is terrorism, the very reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place. Isis-K, the successor to al-Qaeda, already numbers in the thousands. It has not been defeated, only contained. If the Kandahar hardliners prevail and Afghanistan slides further into isolation, that containment will fail. Space will open. History will repeat.

That instability does not stop at Afghanistan’s borders. Around 70,000 Afghans have already arrived in the UK since the Taliban takeover, through a mix of resettlement schemes and asylum routes, reshaping the domestic debate. Even Nigel Farage has argued that engagement is necessary if Afghanistan is ever to become stable and less oppressive, allowing people to return home rather than flee. Should the Kandahar hardliners win this internal battle, those numbers will not fall. They will rise.

Our grasp of what is happening in Afghanistan remains poor. Not helped by a failure to reopen our embassy. Talking does not mean appeasement. It means understanding fault lines, supporting those who grasp the necessity of engagement and preventing the worst outcomes: economic collapse, renewed terrorism and a generation lost, especially women and girls whose futures are being traded in a power struggle they did not choose.

The road to this moment has been long and painful. After 9/11, Britain joined America to dismantle al-Qaeda and deny terrorists a safe haven. That mission evolved into years of fighting the Taliban itself, at immense cost in lives, treasure, and national resolve. The eventual withdrawal, and the sight of Afghanistan handed back to the very insurgents we had spent two decades trying to defeat, was a humiliation that still cuts deep.

That history explains why many would rather look away. But however painful it is to confront, ignoring what is now unfolding in Afghanistan carries its own risks. The past cannot be undone, but the future can still be shaped. Britain once excelled at spotting threats before they exploded. Afghanistan is one of them again. Silence is not a strategy. Disengagement is not neutrality. It is a choice, and one we may yet come to regret.

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First published in The Telegraph on 16th January 2026.