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Monitoring Desk: Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi has told the Financial Times that Kabul welcomes U.S. investment in mining, infrastructure, agriculture and trade, highlighting Afghanistan’s estimated $1 trillion in untapped mineral resources, including copper, lithium, iron ore and rare-earth elements.

Muttaqi called for the release of $9.5 billion in frozen Afghan reserves, including around $7 billion held in the United States, and urged Washington to reopen its embassy in Kabul to help reduce Afghanistan’s international isolation.

“Relations between Afghanistan and the United States should not be assessed through the lens of the past 20 years of war, but rather on the basis of future co-operation,” Muttaqi told the Financial Times.

The Taliban’s appeal comes five years after the group returned to power in Kabul following the withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from Afghanistan in August 2021.

It may be noted that although the United States does not officially provide direct financial assistance to the Taliban government, Washington has continued to provide economic assistance to Afghan Taliban. since the U.S. withdrawal and US officially calls this sending cash money to Afghan Taliban as “humanitarian assistance”. According to U.S. government figures, the United States has provided more than $3.5 billion in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 although over 20 global terror organisations are operating from Afghanistan. UN assessments have identified roughly two dozen terrorist and militant groups with a presence in Afghanistan, including TTP, Al-Qaeda, ISKP, ETIM/TIP and several Central Asian and Baloch militant organisations.

The United States has also permitted certain transactions involving Afghanistan’s financial system while maintaining sanctions on the Taliban and several of its leaders. This distinction has nevertheless generated debate because international aid and the movement of U.S. dollars through Afghanistan’s financial system can indirectly support the functioning of the country’s economy and institutions under Taliban rule.

Afghanistan possesses large but largely undeveloped deposits of copper, lithium, iron ore and rare-earth minerals. The Taliban administration has increasingly sought foreign investment to exploit these resources and develop infrastructure, agriculture and trade.

Kabul has already signed or pursued major mining and infrastructure arrangements with countries including China and Iran, while seeking to attract investment from other major economies.

The Taliban’s latest message to Washington therefore represents a distinctly transactional approach: Kabul is offering access to Afghanistan’s vast natural resources in exchange for economic engagement, sanctions relief, diplomatic contact and potentially greater international recognition.

The proposal is likely to face serious scrutiny in Washington and other Western capitals because of the Taliban’s human rights record, restrictions on women and girls, security concerns and the absence of broad international recognition of its government. Global experts question that after two decades of war, the Taliban returned to Kabul in August 2021 and now, five years later, they are pitching Washington on a different proposition: investment in Afghanistan’s mineral wealth and economic reconstruction and taking cash fiancnail support from United States.