Posted on September 6, 2025
Karachi:
On August 15, Afghan activists around the world marked four years since the Taliban resumed Kabul. In Washington, a virtual protest brought together human rights defenders, exiled activists and diaspora leaders. His message was urgent but bleak: Afghanistan is getting silent, not only under Taliban repression, but in the halls of global power where his difficult situation has been relegated to the margins.
“Gender apartheid is one of the main strategic tools,” said Elika Effikhari, executive director of the Washington Human Rights Group, Jina Alliance, told the virtual protest. He stressed that the case to label Afghanistan is a state of gender apart it is not necessary to build: “It already exists in the face since the Taliban have coded it in the law and the Constitution, the legal system and the guiding documents.”
That reality has defined Afghan life since 2021. The prohibited girls of classrooms, women erased from public spaces and hard punishment justified under a close interpretation of Islamic law. However, although activists sang for virtual protest in multiple cities in the United States, “Taliban are terrorists,” Washington largely looked elsewhere. The US news cycles. That day they were consumed by the coverage of the meeting of former President Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin to talk about Ukraine. Four years after Kabul fell, the United States seems to have moved on.
The contrast could not have been more acute. Afghanistan, once a central piece of foreign and military policy of the United States, has constantly vanished from the political imagination of the United States.
A priority of escape
After the September 11 attacks, Afghanistan committed Washington’s undivided attention for two decades. Billions of dollars were spent, and more than 2,400 American soldiers died there. However, four years after the return of the Taliban, Afghanistan is a footnote in the debates of the Congress, a topic of sporadic conversation in the Think Tanks and a rarity in the main media.
“Nothing in Afghanistan aligns with the [current] The administration approach in commercial diplomacy, “said Dr. Asfandyar Mir, main member of Southern Asia at the Stimson Center.” Unlike the new Syrian regime, the Taliban registry is poorer and the regime has no defenders among the American allies. Consequently, the status quo will persist. The involvement is that Afghanistan will be, in the best case, the problem of the region and the United States will focus on their close anti-terrorist interests, ”he told the T-Magazine in a written answer to the questions on the subject.
Mir added that “even under President Biden, the interest in Afghanistan only feared the collapse of administration’s surveillance, given the disastrous withdrawal of 2021 that the administration damaged politically.” The difference now, he said, is marked: “The current administration operates without the shadow of the withdrawal of Afghanistan. It is more attentive to counterterrorism and is willing to act worldwide, even in southern Asia.”
In other words, Afghanistan only matters to the extent that terrorist threats could incubate. Human rights, governance and development, the same US officials once invoked to justify their mission, have been effectively abandoned.
Washington’s silence
A recent article by Brookings Institution, “Trump’s second administration is a blind eye to Afghanistan” (May 2025), concluded without surroundings that Aghanistan has “effectively disappeared from political attention and the media from the chaotic withdrawal 2021”.
The author, Madiha Afzal, argued that retirement is not only rhetorical. “With deep cuts to humanitarian aid, the reduction of refugees protection and the little appetite for the defense of human rights, millions of Afghans face a worsening of hunger, instability and repression,” says the analytical piece.
As Madiha Afzal points out, “human rights will no longer be a focus of American foreign policy,” a chilling admission given the scale of suffering for Afghan women and girls. The commitment persists only in fragments: limited anti -terrorism cooperation and the silent investment of rewards in certain Taliban figures.
For Afghan activists in exile, this selective commitment is irritating and devastating. While Russia and Iran are accused of supporting the Taliban, the response of the United States is silenced. In rallies in American cities, protesters condemned the role of Moscow, but their demands were barely registered in the political circles of Washington.
The virtual protest, entitled Global Anti-Taliban Demation, issued a resolution shared with T-Magazine that urges the United States government and the international community to designate Russia as a “terrorist sponsor,” acknowledges the system of the Taliban as “gender apartheid”, brings to the Talibatos leaders to justice, protects the refugees, the resistance to people Democracy in gender in gender in gender.
Sadiq Amini, an activist and organizer of the Afghan Human Rights of the protest, told T-Magazine in a written response that welcomes the disconnection of the Trump administration with the Taliban. “We are very happy with the disconnection of the Trump administration with the Taliban terrorists by Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan appreciate it. This change of policy will help the people of Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban terrorists through the uprising of people.”
Competitive priorities: they will go in the center
If Afghanistan has fallen from the Washington radar, Iran has moved to the center of its anti -terrorism map. In an event of the Hudson Institute on August 19, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, an attached assistant of the President and Senior Director of Contribution of the National Security Council, drew the Trump administration strategy.
“Iran is in charge and the center in everything we do in the region because they are still the largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Gorka said. “I have been telling my colleagues since January 20 that you must understand one thing, when the president looks at the region, it does not reduce it in accident cylinders … that metric, that prism is Iran.”
When describing the first achievements, Gorka boasted: “We have released 72 US citizens in less than seven months, the Biden administration made 80 in four years, we have killed 272 jihadists since January, excluding the Hutis.”
While mapping the threats of the Middle East to Africa, Afghanistan barely deserved mention. Groups like IS-K, which have carried out deadly attacks in Kabul and beyond, were eclipsed by the unique Washington’s obsession with Tehran.
A fractured narrative
Silence in Washington around Afghanistan reflects more than changing priorities. Experts say it reveals how Washington processes the legacy of failures. The withdrawal in August 2021, labeled as chaotic, deadly and humiliating in public debates, marked American politics. Both Democrats and Republicans prefer to look the other way, avoiding a reminder of the longest war in the United States and the collapse that followed.
That avoidance has consequences. When treating Afghanistan as a closed chapter, Washington darkens the ongoing realities: the Taliban government has a normal gender apart, the humanitarian crisis has deepened with the aid cuts, and terrorist groups continue to exploit instability.
The activists who met on August 15 are trying to force attention. For them, bets are existential. The education of women, civic freedom and the fragile pluralism of Afghanistan are disappearing before the eyes of the world. However, their songs resonate in a vacuum, drowned by geopolitical rivalries in other places.
What comes next?
Some analysts warn that Washington’s negligence could be counterproductive. The scope of IS-K has already extended to Pakistan and Central Asia, while the internal struggles of the Taliban risk that destabilize the region. Meanwhile, Russia, China and Iran are silently expanding the influence in Kabul, filling the void left by Western retirement.
However, for now, it is unlikely that the United States participates again beyond the specific strikes or the exchange of intelligence. Humanitarian aid has been tight, and refugee programs face adjustment restrictions. The change is clear: Afghanistan is no longer the priority of the United States, but it can continue to be its unfinished business.
As AFzal warns in Brookings, ignoring Afghanistan does not disappear its crises. The country is again becoming a test field, not for the construction of American democracy, but for the limits of Washington’s attention.
Afghan activists say that at this time Afghanistan’s tragedy is double. At home, the Taliban have institutionalized repression to the point that gender apart is intertwined. Abroad, the nation has been abandoned by the power that once he claimed to free him.
The “gender apartheid,” as Effikhari said, “is one of the main strategic tools” of the Taliban government. And yet, for the global community, it is not even a strategic concern. For women and girls who have lost their future, for silenced or exile activists, and for common Afghans trapped between poverty and repression, Washington’s silence may seem treason.
Nilofar Mughal is a journalist with headquarters in Washington, previously affiliated with The Voice of America
All facts and information are the exclusive responsibility of the author
