Taliban Legitimacy Up to Every Country to Decide, White House Says Amid Concerns of Growing CCP-Afghan Ties

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby speaks during a press briefing at the White House on March 29, 2023. Patrick Semansky/AP Photo

The White House on April 6 suggested that countries are free to decide how they want to deal with the isolated Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Asked by The Epoch Times how the United States would approach the growing China–Taliban relationship, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby suggested that that matter wasn’t up to the administration.

“Every country’s got to take their own view of how they’re going to relate to the Taliban,” Kirby said during an April 6 press conference.

“We don’t recognize them as an official government in Afghanistan.”

The Taliban hasn’t been recognized as a legitimate regime by any nation, including China, but Beijing has sought to deepen economic ties with the Taliban, with an eye on Afghanistan’s estimated more than $1 trillion worth of mineral deposits.

Kirby did appear to indicate that the United States could recognize the Taliban later if the Islamic regime did more to provide equal rights to women and girls.

“If they want to be recognized, at least by the United States, if they want to be seen as legitimate, then they need to own up to the promises they made about how they were going to govern that country and how they were going to treat their own people, including women and girls,” he said.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, political chief of Afghanistan's Taliban in Tianjin, China, on July 28, 2021. Li Ran/Xinhua via Reuters

Growing Taliban–CCP Ties

After the Taliban rose back to power in 2021 ahead of the widely criticized U.S. withdrawal from the country, observers have expressed concern that the power vacuum will be filled by the Chinese regime, which is already seeking to broaden its influence in Central Asia and the Middle East.

In January, the Taliban inked a $540 million oil deal with Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (CAPEIC), based in China, its biggest deal since the takeover.

The deal will provide CAPEIC with a 25-year contract to extract oil from more than 1,700 square miles of the Amu Darya basin in Afghanistan and provides the Taliban with a 20 percent stake in the effort.

The move is viewed by analysts as part of a wider effort by communist China to take advantage of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal, as well as to present an alternative model of international relations in the Middle East.

That effort is aimed largely at eroding U.S. influence abroad and proliferating the regime’s own, authoritarian vision for a so-called multipolar world order, analysts say.

The Biden administration also released a report on April 6 that attempted to deflect much of the blame for its withdrawal from Afghanistan, which resulted in 13 U.S. Service Members being killed and a windfall of advanced weapons systems falling into the hands of the Taliban.

Kirby defended the administration’s action, saying President Joe Biden was “proud” of the way the withdrawal was conducted and blamed any chaos on the Trump administration for not providing a plan for the operation and also the Afghan defense forces, whom he claimed “[failed] to act for their country.”