Afghan rare earth minerals
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Asked in the days after the fall of Kabul what the United States should do, John Kiriakou gave three recommendations, and put the least expected of them last and highest.

The three recommendations

First, he said, the United States owes it to the people who worked with it over the last twenty years to get them and their families out, to ensure the safety of the people to whom safety was promised. Second, lines of communication with the Taliban have to be kept open; the United States had been negotiating with them for a number of years, mostly in Doha, and those talks need to continue even without immediate diplomatic relations, so that messages can at least be exchanged.  

Third, and in his own judgement most important, the United States needs to work very very closely with the Chinese. 

Why China

The reasoning is economic. The Taliban and the Chinese, Kiriakou said, have excellent relations, and the Chinese hold an exclusive contract to mine rare earth metals in Afghanistan, a contract with a value that, he says, is known from a Department of Defense report to be one trillion dollars. 

From that he draws the conclusion: the Chinese therefore have a vested interest in a stable, long-term government in Afghanistan, even if that means a government headed by the Taliban. And so if any country has any authority in Afghanistan right now, it is the Chinese, and the United States needs to engage with them to ensure the safety of people inside the country.  

The diplomatic corollary

Asked whether the United States should keep a consulate in Kabul, Kiriakou said it would be very high risk but potentially high reward. The embassy had been abandoned, the last people were being taken out and the documents and equipment destroyed; but while the massive compound was not needed, he thought there should be some sort of diplomatic presence, a building with a desk, and that is all. 

His reading of the Taliban's own calculations in that period is set out in the Taliban truck escort origin, where he argues that a movement which has been both in power and out of power knows that being in power is nicer. 

See also

- The Taliban truck escort origin
- China as economic threat
- Djibouti
- Afghan heroin policy
- The Kite Runner rescue mission
- U.S. diplomatic vacancies
