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The US has lifted bounties on three senior Taliban figures, including the interior minister who also heads a powerful network blamed for bloody attacks against Afghanistan’s former Western-backed government, officials in Kabul said Sunday.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, who acknowledged planning a January 2008 attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul, which killed six people, including US citizen Thor David Hesla, no longer appears on the State Department’s Rewards for Justice website. The FBI website on Sunday still featured a wanted poster for him.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said the US government had revoked the bounties placed on Haqqani, Abdul Aziz Haqqani, and Yahya Haqqani.
“These three individuals are two brothers and one paternal cousin,” Qani told the Associated Press.
The Haqqani network grew into one of the deadliest arms of the Taliban after the US-led 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.
The group employed roadside bombs, suicide bombings and other attacks, including on the Indian and US embassies, the Afghan presidency, and other major targets. They also have been linked to extortion, kidnapping and other criminal activity.
A Foreign Ministry official, Zakir Jalaly, said the Taliban’s release of US prisoner George Glezmann on Friday and the removal of bounties showed both sides were “moving beyond the effects of the wartime phase and taking constructive steps to pave the way for progress” in bilateral relations.
“The recent developments in Afghanistan-US relations are a good example of the pragmatic and realistic engagement between the two governments,” said Jalaly.
Another official, Shafi Azam, hailed the development as the beginning of normalization in 2025, citing the Taliban’s announcement it was in control of Afghanistan’s embassy in Norway.
Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, China has been the most prominent country to accept one of their diplomats. Other countries have accepted de facto Taliban representatives, like Qatar, which has been a key mediator between the US and the Taliban. US envoys have also met the Taliban.
The Taliban’s rule, especially bans affecting women and girls, has triggered widespread condemnation and deepened their international isolation.
Haqqani has previously spoken out against the Taliban’s decision-making process, authoritarianism, and alienation of the Afghan population.
His rehabilitation on the international stage is in contrast to the status of the reclusive Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who could face arrest by the International Criminal Court for his persecution of women.

KYIV: A Russian drone attack on Kyiv killed at least two people and injured several, sparking fires in high-rise apartment buildings and throughout the capital, Ukrainian officials said early on Sunday.
“A massive enemy drone attack on Kyiv,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko posted on the Telegram messaging app.
The scale of the overnight attack was not immediately clear. Reuters witnesses heard several blasts in what sounded like air defense systems in operation.
The state emergency service posted photos showing firefighters fighting blazes at night, including high in an apartment building.
A woman died after drone debris sparked a fire in a high-rise residential building in Dniprovskyi district, the emergency service said on Telegram, while at least 27 people were evacuated from the building.
Another person died in the Holosiivskyi district, the service said.
The United States is pushing for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, and hoping to agree on a partial ceasefire that would halt strikes on energy infrastructure. But both sides have been reporting continued strikes.
At least seven people were injured throughout Kyiv and emergency services were dispatched to several districts of the city where fires were reported, Klitschko said.
Two were injured and several houses damaged in the region surrounding the capital, regional Governor Mykola Kalashnik said on Telegram.
There was no immediate comment from Russia. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the three-year-long war that Russia started with its full-scale invasion on Ukraine. Kyiv, its surrounding region and the eastern half of Ukraine were under air raid alerts for more than five hours, starting late on Saturday, according to Ukraine’s Air Force maps.