Joe Biden deal for hostage Mark Frerichs offers Taliban road to redemption
President Biden appeared to offer the Taliban a pathway towards legitimacy if they freed the last US hostage in Afghanistan, despite UN reports that more than a hundred former regime figures have been killed in reprisals.
As fears grow over famine conditions and a collapsing economy in the country, Biden called on the Taliban to release a veteran seized two years ago by the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied militia, near the border with Pakistan.
“US navy veteran Mark Frerichs . . . spent a decade helping the people of Afghanistan. He has done nothing wrong. And yet for two years the Taliban has held him captive,” he said in a White House statement. “The Taliban must immediately release Mark before it can expect any consideration of its aspirations for legitimacy. This is not negotiable.”
Some $9.5 billion of Afghan government funds are frozen in the US, prompting more than 40 Democrats in Congress to call on Biden to release a “substantial share” to UN aid agencies to feed the population.
The Taliban want the money to come under their control.
Frerichs, 59, worked as an engineer for a decade on Afghan development projects. The Taliban are thought to want to swap him for Bashir Noorzai, a drug lord imprisoned for life in the US.
Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, acknowledged at a congressional hearing last year that the Taliban were the “de facto government” but no country has given the regime official recognition. The Taliban have received co-operation from Pakistan and have appealed to China to push the US to lift sanctions.
Charles Lister, counterterrorism director at the Middle East Institute think tank, said that freeing Frerichs could allow Biden to funnel more aid into Afghanistan. “An American hostage being released, and that being plastered all over the TV, and then a few days later the US government announces a humanitarian waiver on Afghanistan . . . from an electoral perspective that does not look like a terribly bad thing.”
Separately the UN has received “credible allegations” that more than a hundred former members of the Afghan government, its security forces and those who worked with international troops, have been killed since the Taliban takeover. António Guterres, the secretary-general, said in a report to the security council that “more than two thirds” were victims of extrajudicial killings by the Taliban or their affiliates, despite a promise of “general amnesties” made by the Taliban.
At least 50 individuals suspected of affiliation with Isis-K, the Islamic State extremist group operating in Afghanistan, may have met a similar fate, Guterres added.
Afghanistan faces a growing humanitarian emergency, dire economic contraction, the crippling of its banking and financial systems and the worst drought in 27 years. The Taliban are still refusing to form an inclusive government and restore the rights of girls to education and women to work.
“An estimated 22.8 million people are projected to be in ‘crisis’ and ‘emergency’ levels of food insecurity until March 2022,” Guterres said. “Almost nine million of these will be at ‘emergency’ levels of food insecurity, the highest number in the world. Half of all children under five are facing acute malnutrition.”
When the Taliban swept into Kabul on August 15, the United States was quick to freeze Afghanistan’s $9.5 billion central bank assets and stop cash shipments (Charlie Faulkner writes in Kabul).
The block has caused an unprecedented economic crisis, leaving millions struggling to put food on the table amid hyperinflation and a rapidly depreciating currency.
Many Afghans have lost their jobs and businesses have no cash. With thousands of state workers fleeing the country the civil service is struggling.
The healthcare system is on its knees and there is no money for staff wages. The banking system rations what currency is left.
The cost of basic items, including food and medicine, has soared. Wheat, rice, sugar and cooking oil have doubled in price.
Inevitably, a crisis of this magnitude manifests itself in indignity, disease and death. Eight million people are on the brink of starvation.
The UN has said that 97 per cent of Afghans could be pushed into poverty by the middle of the year if the country’s economy remains paralysed. The World Health Organisation has placed a more human figure on the result — up to one million dead in the coming months.
The fall of Afghanistan was a tragedy that heaped shame on western nations. By casting Kabul into the wilderness, those same countries risk compounding that shame, and contributing to an even greater human disaster.
