Moving Beyond the Security Council’s Impasse to Support Afghanistan

Country: Afghanistan Source: International Peace Institute by Aref Dostyar , CJ Pine , and George A. Lopez On March 16th, 2026, the UN Security Council took the rare step of extending the mandate of the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) for just three months rather than the standard year. This puts the council on a 90-day countdown to review and redefine its strategy in Afghanistan. While the United States, China, and Russia’s policies toward Afghanistan diverge in many regards, they unanimously agreed to the adoption of Resolution 2816 regarding the Afghanistan sanctions regime on February 12th. The resolution extended the mandate of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team to support the 1988 Afghanistan Sanctions Committee for 12 months. Yet to date, these sanctions have not brought about the change hoped for. It is time for the Security Council to review its sanctions against the Taliban and align them more clearly with political objectives in support of peace and security for the people of Afghanistan. The 90-day assessment window provides an opportunity to begin this process. Evolution of the 1988 Sanctions The sanctions regime under Resolution 1988 originated when these sanctions were separated from the 1267 ISIL/al-Qaida sanctions regime in 2011. Although counterterrorism remained the overall goal of both regimes, the purpose of this separation was to distinguish the Taliban from global terrorist organizations and treat them as a distinct Afghan political entity. The logic of this action was to signal political support for an Afghan-led peace process. Resolution 1988 provided the then Afghan government with important leverage: it could initiate requests to list and delist individuals and request travel ban waivers, usually when these individuals supported peace efforts. However, the role and leverage of the then Afghan government was neutralized when it was bypassed by the US, which entered direct high-level negotiations with the Taliban, concluding in a 2020 deal . The biggest change to the sanctions regime came with the 2021 collapse of the Afghan government. With the Taliban now taking over government institutions, concerns grew about the humanitarian impact of the sanctions regime. This led the Security Council to adopt Resolution 2615 , inserting a humanitarian carveout in the sanctions regime to ensure aid could reach ordinary people across Afghanistan. Yet apart from the carveout, the Security Council has defaulted to simply maintaining the status quo of the 1988 sanctions regime. The regime still includes an arms embargo, asset freeze, and a travel ban on 135 Taliban members and 5 entities, with the same criteria in place for listing and delisting. Most critically, while the regime remains a tool for the Security Council to pressure the Taliban, this tool is decoupled from a cohesive political strategy. Stakeholders ranging from Afghan opposition groups to international observers have debated whether to increase sanctions on the Taliban or provide relief. Some groups advocate for increased use of targeted sanctions as the key tool for holding the Taliban accountable for human rights abuses and inadequate action to counter terrorism. Many, especially in the United States, argue that sanctions relief would equate to legitimizing the Taliban. On the other hand, Russia and China have argued for increased cooperation with the regime in Kabul. Why Have the 1988 Sanctions Objectives and Conditions Not Been Updated Given the shifts on the ground since 2021, the current sanctions objectives are not sufficiently clear, and several conditions for delisting are outdated. For example, a now defunct condition left in place since 2015 is to evaluate if a sanctioned individual completed reconciliation programs with the former Afghan government. More broadly, the listing criteria are left at any association “with the Taliban in constituting a threat to the peace, stability and security of Afghanistan. They do not reflect the council’s expectations for how the Taliban should behave with the Afghan people, particularly women, and the international community. Reaching consensus on both adding benchmarks and updating listing and delisting criteria will require hard work to bridge the views of states like the US with those of states like Russia and China. Nonetheless, there has been a shortage of debate and deliberation, either publicly or in the council, on options for an update. It is time for the council to roll up its sleeves, given that simply maintaining the status quo of the 1988 sanctions is not delivering the desired policy objectives for Afghanistan. Moving forward, the five permanent council members agree on maintaining the 1988 sanctions regime as a baseline. However, they differ over the conditions for adjusting the regime or adding specific objectives. The recent resolution, with the United States as penholder, incorporated topics beyond counterterrorism or reconciliation, such as condem

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