Two professors from the American University of Afghanistan, of one 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-to-face" peace talks with the Taliban. He said the decision was made in coordination with the United States and international community.
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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 here being 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 of our two colleagues."
Trump in September abruptly ended months of U.S. peace 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 cancelled peace talks were due 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.
While President Barack Obama announced the formal end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 – an invasion that took place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because the Taliban was providing refuge to the perpetrators, al-Qaeda – 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.
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U.S. Navy SEAL commandoes attempted to rescue King and Weeks in a suspected Taliban hideout in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan shortly after they were kidnapped, according to a 2017 report. It is thought they missed the men by a few hours. The Taliban later said King was suffering 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 Taliban-linked 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.
A U.S. military judge in 2017 sentenced Bergdahl to a dishonorable discharge and a reduction in rank but no time behind bars. Bergdahl had pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy and his case drew an especially strong reaction from Trump, who branded Bergdahl a "dirty rotten traitor."
Still, Trump has appeared to make freeing American hostages a priority of his administration and he has shown an active interest in hostage release efforts in headline-grabbing cases of Americans detained in Iran, Russia, Yemen and other global hotspots. He has taken to Twitter to talk about these cases but also leveraged the support of allies such as the United Arab Emirates and France to conduct raids aimed at freeing Americans. In September, Trump appointed Robert O'Brien, the State Department's special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, to the more high-profile national security advisor role vacated by John Bolton.
On Sunday, Trump tweeted that it would be "a very positive" step for U.S.-Iran relations if Tehran returned Robert Levinson. Levinson, 71, was working for the FBI before his disappearance from Kish Island, located off the southern coast of Iran, in 2007. It was later revealed by an Associated Press investigation that Levinson was also on an unsanctioned mission for the CIA in Iran. Levinson was last seen alive in a 2011 hostage video and is considered to be the longest-held American hostage in U.S. history. Iran has long denied that it abducted Levinson or knows his current whereabouts or even if he is still alive.
Trump raised the issue again after Iran's Revolutionary Court filed a missing persons case connected to Levinson with the United Nations.
"The hard part is seeing one of our grandchildren doing something that's he's missing. I know how much he loves children and doted on our own," Levinson's wife, Christine, told USA TODAY in an interview. "Bob's missed it all. High school years, college years. He's missed walking two daughters down the aisle."
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