Don’t touch the hot stove. Never play “chicken” with a freight train. Don’t swallow Tide pods. Throw out leftovers when they turn funny colors. Some rules are so obvious that they need to be explained or even expressed. They’re just common sense, and those who never wish to obtain a “Darwin award” do well to heed them.

For the quarter century following September 11, 2001, most Americans would have placed “Don’t do business with the Taliban” high on the “Obvious No-No” list.

Alas, as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Saturday, the State Department has found it necessary to warn against just that.

More specifically, the State Department cautioned U.S. companies to exercise extreme caution when contracting any business with Afghanistan, as the country is once again run by an entity on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorist groups (SDGT).

As the Office of Foreign Assets Control describes, “All property and interests in property of the designated entities that are in the United States or that are in the possession or control of a U.S. person are blocked. U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with the designated entities unless authorized.”

On July 2, 2002, President George W. Bush added the Taliban to the list of foreign terrorists whose assets are restricted in U.S. territory. The hardline Islamist organization made the list for “allowing territory under its control in Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven and base of operations for Usama bin Laden and the Al-Qaida organization.”

U.S. policy once supported the Taliban against Soviet invasion. But that relationship quickly soured when the Taliban began harboring Islamist terrorists in its territory. In cooperation with local tribes, U.S. forces gradually wrestled the nation of Afghanistan away from the Taliban in an ultimately successful quest to locate bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 terror attacks.

Over the course of that 20-year war, the Taliban killed nearly 2,500 U.S. troops. The last U.S. troops died in an Islamist suicide attack at the Kabul airport amid President Joe Biden’s hasty and arbitrary withdrawal that undermined the democratic regime that governed the country, all but gave the Taliban an arsenal of American weapons, and abandoned our former allies to the Taliban’s cruel mercy.

Since reassuming power in 2021, the Taliban has behaved just as one would expect an unrepentant Islamist militia to behave — especially one that just gave the world’s greatest superpower a noogie.

But one might expect Americans, at least, to remember that the Taliban was responsible for harboring terrorists who took thousands of American lives, that the Taliban refused to surrender bin Laden to justice, and that the Taliban thereafter took thousands of American lives on its own account. For those Americans who struggled to remember, there was a special terrorist designation to remind them.

But, for some, “Never Forget” has given way to “Let bygones be bygones.” On September 7, 2026, former U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad was present at a signing ceremony for a deal allowing a Saudi energy company to develop an Afghan oil field, suggesting he was “an apparent facilitator of the deal,” said Middle East Forum director of policy analysis Michael Rubin.

Rubin took special offense, he said, because Khalilzad, then a member of the National Security Council, was present in the White House situation room on 9/11.

Khalilzad’s presence at the ceremony, so close to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, garnered enough attention that the State Department explicitly distanced itself from his involvement: “Khalilzad is not a U.S. government employee. As such, he does not represent the United States government.”

In recent months, the Taliban has sought to ease its stringent isolation. Only Russia (ironically) formally recognizes the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, although several other neighbors maintain unofficial ties. But American sanctions have denied the Taliban access to international financial systems and foreign investment, and the group is now looking to undo its isolation.

“Relations between Afghanistan and the United States should not be assessed through the lens of the past 20 years of war, but rather on the basis of future co-operation,” proposed Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. “Our economic policy is open.”

“Open” is a strange self-description for one of the most repressive regimes on earth. The Taliban may wish the U.S. to forget its black record of governance, but that does not mean the U.S. should. Actions have consequences, even when the action is harboring terrorists and the consequences linger for decades.