Taliban Rule in Afghanistan Is Worse for Its Neighbours Than America

The U.S. withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan which will mean that the neighbours of the country will have to deal with the problem by themselves now or they’ll suffer because of Taliban.
President Joe Biden has decided to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan by September 11 of this year, and the troops from America’s NATO allies that are still there will undoubtedly be gone by then too. It is possible that the weak Kabul government we have been supporting will somehow manage to stay in power and the Taliban threat it faces will recede as a result of internecine fighting. But this happy result, unfortunately, does not seem very likely. The more likely outcome is that a year or two after the U.S. and allied departure, the weak Kabul government will be overthrown by the Taliban. But what will be the impact of the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan?
It all depends. If indeed the Taliban keeps the promise it made to the Trump administration and ends its ties to Al Qaeda, the impact of its return to power might not be all that bad for America and the West even if it is terrible for the people—especially the women—of Afghanistan. An older, more experienced Taliban leadership might understand that their previous refusal to withdraw their protection from Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda after their organizing the 9/11 attacks on the United States from Afghan territory was what led to the American-led intervention that ousted them. The Taliban won’t want to risk anything like this happening again. Even if a restored Taliban government judges (probably correctly) that Washington would not be willing to send American troops back to Afghanistan, it might decide that Al Qaeda and similar groups are a liability—especially if the restored Taliban government wants to receive development assistance and investment from abroad as well as have normal relations with the outside world.
This “older but wiser” Taliban is one that America and others would probably be willing to coexist with, if not cozy up to. For even if the Taliban went back to treating its citizens harshly, other countries—including the United States—are far more concerned with whether it pursues policies that harm them or not. Indeed, if a restored Taliban government really did distance itself from Al Qaeda, there would undoubtedly be those in the West and elsewhere who would advocate engagement with the Taliban both to make sure it didn’t go back to its bad old ways and to encourage “moderate” elements within it. In other words, if the Taliban leaves us alone, the United States and others would leave it alone too and either turn a blind eye to or only verbally criticize its domestic policies.
But in that the Taliban has not yet ended its ties to Al Qaeda despite promising to do so, it is quite possible that a restored Taliban government will not just continue them but will defiantly provide Al Qaeda with sanctuary in Afghanistan once again like it did prior to 9/11. Whatever else the United States does in response to this, it is hardly likely—as a Taliban government and others might anticipate—that either a Democratic or a Republican administration would be willing to reintervene there like the George W. Bush administration did after 9/11. But what—aside from piling on sanctions that never seem to succeed in changing their targets’ behavior—could the United States do in response?