A diplomat from Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban warned the United States on Monday against threatening retaliatory measures in response to the detentions of U.S. nationals in the country, News.az reports citing Voice of America.
“Our policy is to reach a solution through peaceful means,” Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban ambassador to Qatar, told VOA in written remarks.He spoke two days after the new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened that Washington may place a “very big bounty” on Taliban leaders, suggesting they might hold more American hostages in the country than previously known.
Last week, the de facto Afghan authorities released two Americans, Ryan Corbett and William McKenty, in exchange for a Taliban member serving a life sentence in a U.S. federal prison on drug and terrorism charges. The swap was negotiated by former President Joe Biden’s administration.
“In the face of pressure and aggression, the jihad [holy war] of the Afghan nation in recent decades is a lesson that everyone should learn from,” Shaheen stated.
The Taliban have not revealed how many foreigners are still in their custody in Afghanistan. However, relatives and U.S. officials report the detention of at least two additional Americans. They are George Glezmann, a former airline mechanic, and Mahmood Habibi, a naturalized American.
“Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported,” Rubio wrote on social media platform X on Saturday. “If this is true, we will have to immediately place a VERY BIG bounty on their top leaders, maybe even bigger than the one we had on bin Laden.”
The chief U.S. diplomat did not elaborate or specify the number of Americans being detained in Afghanistan.
Washington offered a bounty of $25 million for information leading to the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden for planning the deadly Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States. Congress subsequently authorized the secretary of state to increase the bounty to a maximum of $50 million.
U.S. forces searched for bin Laden in Afghanistan for years before finding his hideout and killing him in neighboring Pakistan in 2011.
Meanwhile, a former Canadian soldier detained by the Taliban was freed Sunday after more than two months of imprisonment in a deal brokered by Qatar.
“I just spoke with David Lavery upon his safe arrival in Qatar from Afghanistan. He is in good spirits,” Canadian foreign minister Melanie Joly announced on X. Joly credited the tiny Gulf nation’s prime minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani with helping in Lavery’s release.
"Thank you to my Qatari counterpart, @MBA_AlThani_, for helping facilitate the release of our Canadian citizen,” she wrote.
The Taliban waged a lethal insurgency in Afghanistan that persisted for nearly two decades, ultimately regaining power in 2021, mere days before a hasty and chaotic withdrawal of all U.S.-led Western troops from the country along with thousands of Afghan allies.
Taliban leaders have since imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, banning girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade, prohibiting most women from workplaces, and blocking women’s access to public life at large.
The United Nations has designated the restrictions as “gender apartheid,” and the international community has refuted the Taliban’s request for legitimacy to their government due to their severe treatment of the female Afghan population.
The restrictions stem from numerous decrees issued by the reclusive Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, from his base in the southern city of Kandahar, with his aides defending the government as in line with Sharia.
Last week, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced that he had applied for arrest warrants for Akhundzada and Afghanistan’s chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, accusing them of persecuting women and girls.
The Taliban rejected the allegations as baseless and condemned the arrest warrants for their leaders as “devoid of just legal basis, duplicitous in nature and politically motivated.”
