US Navy Veterans Still Hosted By Taliban, Family Urges President Biden To Fire Special Envoy

JAKARTA - Mark Frerichs' family on Monday urged US President Joe Biden to fire Afghanistan's chief peace negotiator, saying the envoy had done little to free the last American believed to be held hostage by the Taliban.

The call for the sacking of US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad comes amid questions over his negotiations with the Taliban which failed to advance the peace process outlined in the February 2020 US troop withdrawal deal he signed with them.

"I have lost faith in Ambassador Khalilzad. He "appears to be ignoring my brother's abduction," Charlene Cakora, Frerichs' sister and spokeswoman for the family, said in a statement to Reuters.

"They need someone who talks to the Taliban who will make Mark a priority. Ambassador Khalilzad should be fired."

A State Department spokesman said in an email that the United States had urged Frerichs' immediate and safe release. And the effort won't stop until Mark comes home.

"We have made this clear to the Taliban in no uncertain terms," the spokesman continued, adding that senior US officials met with the Frerichs family on a regular basis. The National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Frerichs is a 59-year-old US Navy veteran from Lombard, Illinois, working in Afghanistan for a decade on development projects. He was kidnapped a month before Khalilzad signed a US troop withdrawal deal and transferred to the Haqqani network, a brutal Taliban faction accused of carrying out some of the war's deadliest attacks.

The network's leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is wanted by the FBI with a $10 million bounty, was appointed interior minister last week in the Afghan government created by the Taliban after capturing Kabul and troops from a US-led foreign coalition leaving.

Cakora accused Khalilzad of failing to make his brother's release a priority and of never even asking the Taliban about Mark this month, between his abduction and signing a US troop withdrawal deal. Khalilzad, he said, "hasn't even spoken to our family since Joe Biden took office."

Taliban officials said they would release Frerichs in exchange for the release of Bashir Noorzai, an Afghan drug lord and a Taliban partner who is serving a life sentence in the United States, for smuggling $50 million worth of heroin into the country.

The family appealed last month for evidence Frerichs was still alive in an open letter to Sirajuddin Haqqani, requesting that he publish the latest video of the captives. In the letter, Cakora also urged Haqqani to offer an exchange of Frerichs for Noorzai.

"My nation and the Taliban have been at war for a long time. I know, when the war is over, prisoners on both sides must have the ability to return home," he said.