For the moment Washington under President Donald Trump is keeping the Taliban regime operating out of Kabul at a distance. The way Trump is treating the Taliban government reminds analysts of the way the United States deal with Vietnam when it withdrew from that country following the takeover of Saigon, the capital of the south, by the Communists who advanced from Hanoi, the capital of the north. Could Washington live with the Taliban in Kabul? The Washington Post wrote an editorial on the subject under the title, "Even the Taliban shouldn't be a permanent enemy". Opinion such as these in influential newspapers could change the way the American government is approaching the world.

There are reasons for keeping some distance between Washington and Kabul largely because the Taliban's governance record in several areas is abysmal. The newspaper listed the reasons: "Their treatment of women and girls remains abhorrent. Girls and women are prohibited from pursuing an education beyond primary school and banned from most jobs. Former Afghan government officials and members of the U.S.-trained security forces continued to be hunted and killed."

There are good reasons for putting a lot of pressure on the government currently operating out of Kabul. Some of what the Taliban are doing in terms of governance was predicted to me in a long conversation I had in 2020 at a dinner in a royal palace in Kabul with Ashraf Ghani who had been elected twice the president of Afghanistan. He had worked with me at the World Bank when, as Vice President, I was managing the institution's work in Latin America and the Caribbean. There were some problems in three........

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