By Chris Summers
Contributing Writer
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday designated Afghanistan as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” and declared the country not safe for Americans.
The Taliban regime — which has ruled Afghanistan since the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — is currently holding Dennis Coyle, a U.S. academic, and Mahmoud Shah Habibi, an Afghan-American businessman.
“The Taliban continues to use terrorist tactics, kidnapping individuals for ransom or to seek policy concessions. These despicable tactics need to end,” Rubio said in a statement.
“It is not safe for Americans to travel to Afghanistan because the Taliban continues to unjustly detain our fellow Americans and other foreign nationals,” he added.
On Monday, Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, also accused the Taliban of operating “hostage diplomacy” in Afghanistan.
Rubio said the Taliban needs to release Coyle, Habibi, and “all Americans unjustly detained in Afghanistan” immediately and put an end to what he called “hostage diplomacy.”
Habibi, who worked as a contractor for an Afghan telecommunications company, Asia Consultancy Group, disappeared in August 2022, while Coyle has been detained since January 2025.
The State Department is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the “location, recovery and return” of Habibi, but the regime in Kabul denies any knowledge of him.
Habibi was a former director of Afghanistan’s civil aviation.
The FBI has said he was taken from his vehicle near his home in Kabul, and detained by the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence, along with his driver and 29 other employees of Asia Consultancy Group.
All but Habibi and one other employee have since been released.
‘Clear Message’ to Taliban
Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer at Global Reach, a nonprofit that has worked on the Habibi case, said the designation was a “clear message from the Trump administration to the Taliban that they hold the keys to resolving four cases of Americans who were arrested in their country and nothing will move forward in the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship until that happens.”
At a U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday, Waltz queried whether it was right for Afghanistan to be given $1 billion in humanitarian aid when the regime denies basic rights to women.
He said the Taliban had demonstrated “bad faith” and made the United States “deeply skeptical of their willingness to meet their international commitments or respect Afghanistan’s international obligations.”
In February 2020, the first Trump administration signed a peace deal in Doha with the Taliban, which said that, subject to certain conditions, the U.S.-led coalition would withdraw all troops within 14 months.
But the following year, under President Joe Biden, the Afghan government’s military collapsed, and the Taliban regained Kabul and took over the country for the first time since 2001, leading to a hurried evacuation of American diplomats, officials and the last remaining troops.
“While the United States continues to participate in the [Doha] process and its working groups, we doubt the Taliban’s motives,” Waltz said.
“We cannot build confidence with a group that continues to detain innocent Americans and ignores the basic needs of the Afghan people.”
The State Department also identified Iran as a state sponsor of wrongful detention on Feb. 27, a day before the United States launched Operation Epic Fury against the regime in Tehran, killing its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“For decades, Iran has continued to cruelly detain innocent Americans, as well as citizens of other nations, to use as political leverage against other states. This abhorrent practice must end,” Rubio said in a statement on Feb. 27.
Most famously, 66 staff members of the United States embassy in Tehran were detained by Iranian students on Nov. 4, 1979, and 52 of them were held hostage for 444 days before being released in January 1981, on the day of the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
