WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday agreed to set up an interests section in Afghanistan under Qatar, assisting US citizens following the shuttering of the embassy during the Taliban takeover.
Welcoming his Qatari counterpart to Washington, Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed an agreement that established Qatar as the United States protecting power in Afghanistan” with the Gulf ally to establish a US interests section at its Kabul embassy.
“Let me again say how grateful we are for your leadership, your support on Afghanistan, but also to note that our partnership is much broader than that,” Blinken told Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani.
Qatar, home to a major US military base, has played a major role both in the diplomacy and the evacuations as the United States ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Around half of the 124,000 Westerners and Western-allied Afghans flown out in the waning days of the US military involvement transited through Qatar.
The Qataris earlier played host to negotiations between the United States and Taliban that led to the February 2020 agreement for the United States to withdraw troops.
Since the Taliban takeover, US embassy operations in Kabul have been relocated to Qatar.
The United States closed down its embassy in Kabul, which was one of its largest in the world, in August as it became clear that the Western-backed government was falling, with diplomats destroying sensitive materials and taking down the flag.
Despite the Taliban’s draconian 1996-2001 regime and years of war with the United States, US officials have been cautiously optimistic on dealing with the Taliban, saying that the Islamists are largely carrying out promises to let people leave the country.
But the United States has ruled out any immediate recognition or reopening of its embassy in Kabul, saying it is waiting to see that the Taliban make good on other concerns including on the treatment of women and prohibiting Al-Qaeda from basing operations in Afghanistan.
Blinken says Qatar to handle US interests in Afghanistan
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Blinken says Qatar to handle US interests in Afghanistan
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed an agreement that established Qatar as the US protecting power in Afghanistan
- Qatar has played a major role both in the diplomacy and the evacuations as the US ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan
Immigration judge rejects Trump effort to deport Palestinian student
- Mahdawi, born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, was arrested in April 2025 upon arriving for an interview for his US citizenship petition
A US immigration judge has rejected efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to deport Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested last year following his participation in pro-Palestinian protests. Lawyers for Mahdawi detailed the immigration judge’s decision in a court filing on Tuesday with a federal appeals court in New York, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to his release from immigration custody in April.
It was the latest case in which an immigration judge rejected a case brought as part of the broader effort by Trump’s administration to detain and deport non-citizen students with pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel views who engaged in campus activism.
Chelmsford, Massachusetts-based Immigration Judge Nina Froes wrote in a February 13 decision that the US Department of Homeland Security failed to meet its burden of proving he was removable, which it sought to do using an unauthenticated document signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “This decision is an important step toward upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice,” Mahdawi said in a statement.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The administration has the option of challenging the judge’s decision before the Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the US Department of Justice.
Mahdawi, born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, was arrested in April 2025 upon arriving for an interview for his US citizenship petition. A judge swiftly ordered Trump’s administration not to deport him from the US or take him out of the state of Vermont.
After two weeks in detention, Mahdawi walked out of the federal courthouse in Burlington, Vermont, after US District Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered that he be released.
In another case, an immigration judge on January 29 terminated removal proceedings the administration initiated against Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was targeted after co-authoring an editorial that criticized her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Last month, a federal judge in Boston ruled that the administration had adopted an unlawful policy of detaining and deporting scholars like Ozturk and Mahdawi that chilled the free speech of non-citizen academics at universities. The Justice Department is appealing that decision.
