Washington: The family of Mark Frerichs on Monday urged U.S. President Joe Biden to fireside his chief Afghanistan peace negotiator, charging that the envoy has done little to win the discharge of the last American believed to be held hostage by the Taliban.
The call for US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad’s dismissal comes amid questions over his negotiations with the Taliban that did not advance the social process outlined within the February 2020 U.S. troop pullout deal he signed with them.
“I have lost faith in Ambassador Khalilzad,” Charlene Cakora, Frerichs’ sister and therefore the family spokesperson, said during a statement to Reuters, charging that he “appears to possess ignored my brother’s kidnapping.”
“They need someone lecture the Taliban who will make Mark a priority,” she continued. “Ambassador Khalilzad must be fired.”
A State Department spokesperson said in an email that the us has been pressing for Frerichs’ “immediate and safe release” and people efforts “will not stop until Mark comes home.”
“We have made that clear to the Taliban in no uncertain terms,” the spokesperson continued, adding that senior U.S. officials “meet with the family regularly.”
The 59-year-old U.S. Navy veteran from Lombard, Illinois, worked in Afghanistan for a decade on development projects. He was abducted the month before Khalilzad signed the U.S. troop pullout deal and was transferred to the Haqqani network, a brutal Taliban faction accused of a number of the deadliest attacks of the war.
The network’s leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who features a $10 million FBI bounty on his head, was named interior minister last week within the Taliban government announced after their lightning takeover of Afghanistan because the last American soldiers left.
Cakora alleged that Khalilzad did not make her brother’s release a priority and “never even asked the Taliban about Mark within the month” between his abduction and therefore the U.S. troop pullout deal signing.
Khalilzad, she said, “hasn’t even spoken to our family since Biden took office.”
Taliban officials have suggested they might free Frerichs reciprocally for the discharge of Bashir Noorzai, an Afghan drug baron and Taliban associate serving a life within the us for smuggling $50 million of heroin into the country.
The family appealed last month for proof that Frerichs is alive in an letter to Sirajuddin Haqqani, asking that he publish a recent video of the captive.
In the letter, Cakora also urged Haqqani to supply to trade Frerichs for Noorzai.
“My nation and therefore the Taliban are at war for an extended time,” she said. “I know that when wars end, prisoners on each side should have the power to return home.”
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