Washington– The US State Department on Monday designated Afghanistan as a state sponsor of unlawful detention United States Ambassador to the United Nations Separately, he called on the country to engage in what he described as “hostage diplomacy.”
With this classification, Afghanistan joins Iran as countries targeted by the United States in the past two weeks for its practice of detaining Americans in the hope of extracting political concessions. Iran received a similar rating on February 27, one day before the elections The United States and Israel launched strikes against the Islamic Republic in what has since become a war in the Middle East.
The designations are intended to increase pressure on both countries to stop holding Americans hostage or risk sanctions.
“The Taliban continues to use terrorist tactics, kidnapping individuals for ransom or to obtain political concessions,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “These despicable tactics must end.” He added: “It is not safe for Americans to travel to Afghanistan because the Taliban continue to unjustly detain our American citizens and other foreign nationals.”
Rubio called on the Taliban to release Americans believed to be detained, including Dennis Coyle, an academic researcher who has been detained in the country since January 2025. Mahmoud Habibi, An Afghan-American businessman who worked as a contractor for a Kabul-based telecommunications company disappeared in 2022. The FBI and Habibie’s family have said they believe Taliban forces kidnapped Habibie, but the Taliban have denied holding him.
Eric Laibson, a former National Security Council official who serves as chief strategy officer at Global Reach, a nonprofit that works on the cases of Habibie and other detained Americans, praised the designation as “a clear message from the Trump administration to the Taliban that they hold the keys to resolving four cases of Americans detained in their country and nothing will move forward in the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship until that happens.”
Also on Monday, Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, accused Afghan Taliban leaders of engaging in “hostage diplomacy,” pointing to the detention of innocent Americans. He also questioned the $1 billion in humanitarian aid required for the country when its leaders deprive Afghan women of their basic rights.
Waltz told a UN Security Council meeting that the Taliban’s actions “demonstrate bad faith” and make the United States “deeply doubtful about its willingness to fulfill its international obligations or respect Afghanistan’s international obligations.”
He said this concern applies to the Doha Peace Agreement that President Donald Trump signed with the Taliban in February 2020, which led to the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban’s control of the country, and its harsh suppression of women’s rights.
“While the United States continues to participate in the (Doha) process and its working groups, we are suspicious of the Taliban’s motives,” Waltz said. He added: “We cannot build trust with a group that continues to detain innocent Americans and ignores the basic needs of the Afghan people.”
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Lederer reported from the United Nations.