If you’re a pragmatic Taliban official in Kabul, the West’s warm embrace of Syria’s new leader must be jarring. Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa—once affiliated with an offshoot of al Qaeda—has shaken hands with French President Emmanuel Macron, watched his foreign minister raise a new flag at the United Nations, and received praise from U.S. President Donald Trump after meeting him in Saudi Arabia, where Trump pledged to lift all sanctions on Syria and normalize relations.
Notably, Afghanistan, which was excluded from Trump’s 2017 travel ban, is now included in his latest one. Syria, which was on the original list, is spared this time. Yet both countries, by the administration’s own logic, pose similar risks that do not warrant blanket bans. In Afghanistan’s case, the move will endanger former partners of the U.S. military mission. The disparity in how the two countries are being treated is increasingly stark.
The world’s embrace of the new Syrian government, in contrast to its cold shoulder toward Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, reveals a blunt truth that recognition hinges less on legal norms or territorial control than on history, optics, strategic choices, and how much you matter to the West.
Unlike in Afghanistan, the United States didn’t lose more than 2,000 troops in Syria, nor did Europe suffer losses. The West wasn’t propping up the Assad regime that Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) overthrew; it was sanctioning it.
It’s true that Sharaa, then known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, briefly fought as an insurgent in Iraq, was imprisoned, and later led the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra before rebranding and merging other groups to form HTS, which is also designated as a terror group. Whether that affiliation was ideological, opportunistic, or both remains debated. But HTS and Sharaa are not tied to the deep, psychological trauma of 9/11—and the Taliban always will be. That distinction carries enormous weight.
Perhaps the biggest difference is optics. Sharaa has mastered the art of transformation. Once featured on a U.S. Rewards for Justice poster with a $10 million bounty—pictured in fatigues and a turban under the words “Stop This Terrorist”—he rebranded himself as a warrior and intellectual during his rule in Idlib. He gave lectures at the local university, swapped his jihadi image for olive fatigues that evoked a young Fidel Castro, and now he appears in suits and ties. The reclusive Taliban emir, by contrast, remains hidden in Kandahar, and his deputies still resemble the Taliban of decades past.
But it’s not just for show. Sharaa is also making different choices than the Taliban, and these choices matter. Unlike the Taliban, which has steadily erased women from public life—banning girls’ education beyond primary school and shuttering beauty salons—Sharaa meets publicly with delegations of Syrian women. Secular life in Damascus, at least, has not ground to a halt.
While many Syrians openly celebrated the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, reactions to the Taliban’s return in Afghanistan were far more divided. Among the Afghan diaspora, which is primarily who Western policymakers meet, the response was overwhelmingly negative. Thousands of Afghans fled the country, whereas thousands of Syrians returned, either permanently or to visit, in an atmosphere that felt euphoric at times.
What followed is a tale of two very different diasporas. At first glance, the Syrian and Afghan communities in the United States share much in common. Both were shaped by war, with their largest waves of migration happening in the 2010s. By 2020, more than 100,000 Syrian immigrants were living in the United States—an estimated 80 percent increase from a decade earlier, driven largely by the civil war that began in 2011. The broader Syrian-origin population, including U.S.-born descendants, is even larger. The Afghan population grew from roughly 54,000 to 195,000 between 2010 and 2022, outpacing broader immigration trends. While more than 73,000 Afghans were resettled under Operation Allies Welcome after the 2021 collapse of the Afghan government, migration had been steadily rising for over a decade. Earlier in the war, when the Afghan state appeared more stable, fewer Afghans chose to leave.
In both cases, conflict was the primary driver of displacement. But the political contexts differed. Many Afghans fled the Taliban, now restored to power. Many Syrians fled Assad, who has since been ousted. Although both communities broadly opposed the forces they fled, that does not translate into political unity. Still, their experiences shape how they want the United States to engage their homelands.
Demographics matter, as well. Most Syrians in Syria and the diaspora are Sunni Muslims. While they may not necessarily support Sharaa’s new government, many view it as less threatening than the Assad regime and are generally more open to engagement—particularly those involved in grassroots organizing. Minority groups, such as the Alawites, Druze, and Kurds, are more skeptical but less visible. The Afghan diaspora includes large numbers of Tajiks and Pashtuns; though most oppose the Taliban, Tajik communities tend to resist any U.S. dialogue with the group.
The Afghan diaspora, especially in the United States, largely pushed Washington to isolate the Taliban-led government, maintain sanctions, and, in some cases, back resistance groups like the National Resistance Front. Others focused almost entirely on relocating vulnerable Afghans abroad.
While some Afghan diaspora voices, particularly those who travel between the two countries, called for a more pragmatic approach to the Taliban, the dominant tone was hostile—amplified by former diplomats, nongovernmental organizations, and human rights groups. In contrast, Syrian American and European groups actively advocated for engaging Syria’s new leaders. Since the Assad regime remains so widely reviled, the concerns of many Alawites, a minority group once protected by its co-religionists in the Assad family and who face retribution under the new government, are largely absent from Western policy debates.
Syrian dissenters warn that the new government is ushering in extremism, pogroms, and a return to authoritarianism. But for now, such fears are drowned out by widespread relief at ending the civil war and Assad’s dungeons.
The most important reason, however, for the West’s different approach to Syria than Afghanistan is simple. In the West’s view, Syria matters and Afghanistan does not. That’s hard for Afghans themselves to acknowledge. Muhammad Iqbal, a 20th-century poet, wrote, “Asia is a body of water and clay, of which the Afghan nation forms the heart.”
Both the former government and the current Taliban have invoked this line to argue that Afghanistan holds global significance that cannot be ignored. It’s a sentiment that was often echoed by U.S. and European officials throughout the country’s 20-year war. Yet Afghanistan was treated as a sideshow and ultimately abandoned. Syria, by contrast, sits at the crossroads of the Middle East.
Syria was the doorstep of the Ottoman Empire in the Arab world, and its sizable Kurdish population ensures that it remains a core strategic concern for neighboring Turkey. Syria also borders Israel and has previously served as a staging ground for anti-Israel militancy. Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights and its recent military incursions and strikes deep into Syrian territory underscore how seriously it views the potential threat across the border. But this narrow threat perception risks missing a strategic opportunity to reset relations and further isolate Iran.
Under the Assad regime, Syria was long viewed by the United States as an Iranian proxy. While U.S. President George W. Bush didn’t mention Syria in his 2002 “axis of evil” speech, John Bolton, then-undersecretary for arms control and international security, listed Syria as one of two rogue states “beyond the axis of evil” in a speech the same year. This view only deepened during the Syrian civil war, as Assad grew increasingly dependent on Iran and Russia for survival. The conflict displaced millions, sending refugees into Turkey and Europe, where they fueled nationalist backlash and occasional security concerns.
Strategically located along the Eastern Mediterranean, Syria also holds significant value for Russia, which—despite bombing HTS-controlled Idlib prior to Assad’s ousting—has worked to preserve its naval access along the Mediterranean coast. All of this makes Syria a continuing concern for the United States.
The United States has been slower than France, Germany, and Russia to engage the new rulers in Damascus. But Trump’s stated openness to normalization, promises to ease sanctions, positive signals from the U.S. Treasury Department, and the appointment of Thomas Barrack as both U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria—a move that underscores the recognition of Turkey’s key role in shaping Syria’s future—all suggest that Washington is taking a different approach with Syria than it is with the Taliban.
While the Trump administration has shown some willingness to engage the Taliban, such as by sending a hostage envoy to Kabul and lifting bounties on leaders like Sirajuddin Haqqani, the contrast remains glaring. Whether early engagement with Damascus will keep the regime more moderate, prevent terrorist havens, or avert another episode of sectarian violence against groups like the Alawites and Druze remains to be seen. But as others have argued, isolating the Taliban did little to moderate the group. Syria will be the test of whether early engagement yields better results than isolation at arm’s length.
Both the Taliban and Syria’s new leadership derive their legitimacy from power gained through perseverance and by filling the void left by a failed government—not from the international community, much less the West. Sharaa spent years governing Idlib, building an alternative to Baathist rule that allowed him to step in and rule Damascus almost overnight, much like the Taliban did in Afghanistan.
However, legitimacy without international recognition keeps a country isolated. Both the Taliban and Sharaa’s government have shown openness to engagement, including with Russia and even the United States. Yet it is Washington that has hesitated. In both cases, their rise was partly shaped by U.S. policy, from withdrawal in Afghanistan to crippling sanctions on Assad, though Washington was a less important player in Syria.
The Trump administration now seems ready to deal with Syria as it is. The Taliban could take a page from Sharaa’s playbook and his willingness to be pragmatic for the betterment of his country, but the United States should also apply its own example and continue to adopt a more pragmatic approach toward other former adversaries, particularly if positive results are observed in Syria.
The post Why the West Embraced Syria and Ditched Afghanistan appeared first on Foreign Policy.
