In the very last hours of President Joe Biden’s time in office, a prisoner exchange years in the making was finally struck: the Taliban agreed to swap two Americans being held in Afghanistan for one Taliban member serving a life sentence in a US prison.
But there was an unexpected delay (at least in part due to bad weather in Washington and Kabul) and Donald Trump was officially back in the White House when Americans Ryan Corbett and William McKenty were handed over and on their way home early Tuesday, exchanged for Afghan Taliban member Khan Mohammed who was convicted in 2008 on narco-terrorism charges.
Mohammed had been flown by officials from the US to Doha. Qatar facilitated the trade by hosting several rounds of US negotiations with the Taliban and also provided logistical support to the operations to get the two American men out of Kabul, according to multiple people familiar with the details of the swap.
The outgoing administration’s plan for the trade with the Taliban was communicated to Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz by Biden’s adviser Jake Sullivan.
“They are on board with this deal,” the Biden official said. “They have acknowledged it, and they have not objected.”
A senior Trump administration official pushed back on their approval of the swap.
“While we would not do the deal that the Biden administration did at the end, we are always happy to have two Americans home,” the Trump official said.
Biden’s envoy for hostage affairs, Ambassador Roger Carstens, had been dispatched to Doha along with Mohammed, a person familiar with the trade said. Carstens’ time in government was also supposed to end when Trump came into office, but he was already on the move during Monday’s presidential transfer of power. A senior Biden administration official declined to say exactly where Mohammed would be handed over to the Taliban and the Americans would be picked up.
On top of the bad weather delaying things, one person briefed on the trade said the Taliban preferred to let Trump take the win for the deal.
“They [the Taliban] didn’t want the news to die during the inauguration and they want the Trump administration to have the credit,” the source said.
Carstens has been helping lead efforts to get at least four Americans released by the Taliban and recently met representatives in Doha with a new offer. Publicly US officials had discussed freeing Corbett and two others, George Glezmann and Mahmoud Habibi. All three were detained in 2022.
Little is known about McKenty and what he was doing in Afghanistan. The Biden White House declined to offer any details, saying only that his case was known to them and his family has previously asked for privacy around his case.
“The Taliban has rejected everything every single time,” said a senior Biden administration official who discussed the negotiations on condition of anonymity, adding that they had “put on the table several significant offers.”
“In [Biden’s] waning days there’s been a real push, as there always is, to try to figure out if we can make progress on those who remain, who remain top of mind for the president and the administration, even as he is walking out the door,” the official said, while acknowledging that the next Trump administration likely put added pressure on the Taliban.
“The incoming administration has made several public statements about their expectation that Americans be freed from Afghanistan and that there would be consequences if that were not the case,” the official said. “I think the Taliban’s decision to act now with respect to Ryan [Corbett] is in part motivated by that.”Corbett and McKenty are expected to land around midday in the US, but their destination is unclear. In the past, Americans held abroad have been taken to the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, which has a specialized program for reintegration. (CNN)