Prisoner exchange to free US hostage
Taliban agrees to release 2 professors held in 2016
Two professors from the American University of Afghanistan, one of whom is a U.S. citizen, will be released from Taliban captivity as part of a prisoner exchange with the militant group, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced Tuesday.
The two men – American Kevin King, 63, and Australian Timothy Weeks, 50 – were ambushed at gunpoint while leaving the university in 2016. They last appeared in a video released in 2017 appealing to President Donald Trump to secure their release. In the video, they appear pale and gaunt.
Ghani confirmed the deal in a televised speech and said he hoped the move would “pave the way for face-toface” peace talks with the Taliban. He said the decision was made in coordination with the United States and international community.
Three Taliban commanders – Anas Haqqani, Haji Maali Khan and Abdul Rasheed Haqani – were released as part of the agreement, the president said. He did not specify where King and Weeks were held or when they would be released.
There was no immediate reaction from the White House. The American University of Afghanistan said in a statement that it welcomed the development and was “encouraged to hear reports of the possible release.”
In September, Trump ended months of U.S. negotiations with Taliban leaders, who control large parts of Afghanistan, after the group admitted killing a U.S. soldier in a suicide bombing that killed 12 people in total.
The canceled peace talks were to be held with the Taliban and the Afghan president at the U.S. president’s country retreat at Camp David. The talks, complicated by the Taliban and Afghan government’s unruly relationship, were aimed at securing a peace deal to end nearly 20 years of war in Afghanistan, a conflict that has killed at least 2,400 U.S. soldiers, according to the Pentagon.
In 2014, President Barack Obama announced the formal end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan – an invasion that took place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because the Taliban provided refuge to the perpetrators, al-Qaida. About 14,000 U.S. forces remain in the country under a NATO mission that has dragged on with no clear conditions for walking away. Withdrawing the majority of them is one of Trump’s signature campaign promises.
U.S. Navy SEAL commandos attempted to rescue King and Weeks in a suspected Taliban hideout in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan shortly after they were kidnapped, The Guardian reported in 2017. They may have missed the men by only a few hours. The Taliban said King suffered from heart disease and had a kidney problem. “If we stay here for much longer, we will be killed. I don’t want to die here,” Weeks said in the video released in 2017, addressing Trump.
The three Taliban commanders who were released as part of the agreement are members of the Haqqani network, which is the same Taliban affiliate that held U.S. soldier Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl captive in brutal conditions for five years after he walked off his post in Afghanistan in 2009. Bergdahl was released in 2014 in a prisoner exchange with the Taliban brokered by Qatar.