US designates Afghanistan as a sponsor of wrongful detention, accuses it of 'hostage diplomacy'

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department on Monday designated Afghanistan as a sponsor of wrongful detention as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations separately called out the country for engaging in what he said was “hostage diplomacy.”

With the designation, Afghanistan joins Iran as countries singled out by the U.S. in the past two weeks for their practice of detaining Americans in hopes of extracting policy concessions. Iran was given an identical designation on Feb. 27, one day before the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against the Islamic Republic in what has since become a war in the Middle East.

The designations are designed to ramp up pressure on both nations to stop taking Americans hostage or risk penalties.

“The Taliban continues to use terrorist tactics, kidnapping individuals for ransom or to seek policy concessions. These despicable tactics need to end,” Secretary of State Marco 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.”

Rubio called on the Taliban to release Americans believed to be in its custody, including Dennis Coyle, an academic researcher detained in the country since January 2025, and Mahmood Habibi, an Afghan American businessman who worked as a contractor for a Kabul-based telecommunications company and vanished in 2022. The FBI and Habibi’s family have said they believe Habibi was taken by Taliban forces, but the Taliban has denied holding him.

Eric Lebson, a former National Security Council official who serves as chief strategy officer at Global Reach, a nonprofit that is working on the cases of Habibi 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 who were arrested in their country and nothing will move forward in the US/Afghanistan relationship until that happens.”

Also on Monday, Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., accused Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders of engaging in “hostage diplomacy,” pointing to innocent Americans being detained. He also questioned the $1 billion in humanitarian aid being sought for the country when its leaders deny Afghan women their basic rights.

Waltz told a U.N. Security Council meeting that the Taliban’s actions “demonstrate bad faith” and have made the U.S. “deeply skeptical of their willingness to meet their international commitments or respect Afghanistan’s international obligations.”

He said this concern applies to the Doha peace deal that President Donald Trump signed with the Taliban in February 2020, which led to the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban takeover of the country, and its harsh crackdown on the rights of women.

“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.”

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Lederer reported from the United Nations.