The Taliban kidnapped American Kevin King in 2016 along with Timothy Weeks, an Australian national, outside the American University of Afghanistan.
Two professors from the American University of Afghanistan, of one whom is a U.S. citizen, will be released from Taliban captivity as part of a prisoner exchange with the militant group, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced Tuesday.
There was no immediate reaction from the White House. The American University of Afghanistan said in a statement that it welcomed the development and was"encouraged to hear reports of the possible release of our two colleagues." While President Barack Obama announced the formal end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 – an invasion that took place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because the Taliban was providing refuge to the perpetrators, al-Qaeda – about 14,000 U.S. forces remain in the country under a NATO mission that has dragged on with no clear conditions for walking away. Withdrawing the majority of them is one of Trump's signature campaign promises. U.S.
Still, Trump has appeared to make freeing American hostages a priority of his administration and he has shown an active interest in hostage release efforts in headline-grabbing cases of Americans detained in Iran, Russia, Yemen and other global hotspots. He has taken to Twitter to talk about these cases but also leveraged the support of allies such as the United Arab Emirates and France to conduct raids aimed at freeing Americans.
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