• A prisoner exchange involving the Taliban and the Us is completed.
• They exchange an American naval veteran.
• They get a significant ally of the Afghan government.

Afghanistan’s foreign minister reports that a prisoner exchange involving the Taliban and the United States has been completed, exchanging an American naval veteran for a significant ally of the Afghan government.

Mark Frerichs, who was abducted in 2020, was reportedly exchanged for Bashar Noorzai, a powerful figure and Taliban collaborator who has been held for 17 years in a US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay for heroin smuggling, according to Amir Khan Muttaqi on Monday.

At the airport in Kabul today, Mark Frerichs was given to the US while Haji Bashar was given to us, according to Muttaqi, speaking to reporters there. He added that Frerichs was transferred to a US delegation and that the exchange took place “after protracted talks.”

According to the US State Department, the former US navy veteran was being kidnapped while working as a civil engineer on building projects in Afghanistan.

In a video broadcast by The New Yorker magazine earlier this year, he was last heard appealing for his release so that he might be reunited with his family.

Frerichs claims that the video was shot in November of last year.

Noorzai did not hold an official role in the Taliban, according to the Afghan government’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, but he “gave considerable support, including weapons,” when the movement began to take shape in the 1990s.

In a brief speech alongside Muttaqi and the acting deputy prime ministers of the Taliban, Noorzai expressed his pride at being in the nation’s capital with his brothers.

As the international world confronts the Afghan government on human rights, particularly those of girls and women whose access to education and employment has been restricted, tensions between the Taliban and the international community remain.

In addition, it has asked the Taliban to stop intimidating journalists, activists, and critics.

The Taliban denies repressing dissent and claims that the issue of females’ education is being discussed.

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