Bright milestones on the mediation road: Qatari-brokered prisoner exchange
The Qatari mediation between the US and the Taliban spanned multiple rounds from the January 2012 negotiations following intense communications between the two parties. Five Taliban officials sat down at the negotiations table in Doha along with representatives of the US administration.
The two parties agreed on confidence-building steps, including opening a Taliban’s office in Doha and conducting a prisoner exchange. Thus, Qatar succeeded in mediating two prisoner exchange agreements, one in May 2014 and the other in September 2022.
May 2014: First prisoner exchange
At the end of May 2014, the Taliban handed over captured US Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, 28, to the US mission in Afghanistan. In return, the US administration released five of the most high-profile Taliban leaders detained in Guantanamo.
Negotiations
Negotiations between the two parties began early in 2012, with the US negotiators meeting face-to-face with the Taliban leaders in Qatar. The talks achieved little if any progress at that time due to the US administration’s desire to push the process in the direction of broader peace, while the Taliban wanted to limit the talks to the prisoner exchange. The US, however, maintained the Qatari-brokered talks until the exchange took place in May 2014.
Bowe Bergdahl
Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, from Haley, Idaho, served in an infantry division in Paktika, near the Afghan border with Pakistan. He went missing at the end of June 2009, months after joining US forces in Afghanistan.
Taliban leaders
The US released five Taliban leaders on condition that they do not leave Qatari territory for at least a full year. The leaders are:
- Muhammad Fazal: Deputy Minister of Defense in the Taliban government.
- Khairullah Khair Khawah: A high-ranking Taliban official who served as Minister of Interior and Governor of Herat, the third largest city in Afghanistan.
- Abdul Haq Watheq: Deputy Minister of Intelligence in the Taliban government.
- Nurullah Nouri: Governor and senior military commander in the Taliban.
- Muhammad Nabi Omari: Taliban security commander.
September 2022: Second prisoner exchange
The US president and Afghan officials announced that the Taliban had released Mark Frerichs, a former American soldier who was taken in 2020 in Afghanistan, in exchange for an important Taliban ally, Bashir Noorzai, who was incarcerated in a US jail.
Negotiations
Qatari officials played a major role over months to draw up the deal after long negotiations. “This morning at 10 a.m. the American citizen was handed over to an American team at the Kabul airport and Haji Bashir was handed over to us at Kabul airport,,” Amir Khan Muttaki, the Afghan Foreign Minister, told reporters in Kabul.
“Bringing the negotiations that led to Mark’s freedom to a successful resolution required difficult decisions, which I did not take lightly,” US President Joe Biden said. The US administration did not provide further details. However, diplomats told AFP that Qatar helped the US intensify its contacts with the Taliban in the months following the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.
Mark Frerichs
Frerichs was a US Marine, who worked later as a civil engineer in construction projects in Afghanistan. He was detained for 31 months by the Taliban. After being handed over to the Americans, he headed to Doha.
Bashir Noorzai
According to Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s official spokesperson, Noorzai did not hold an official position within the organization, but he provided significant support to the Taliban in the 1990s. He was detained for 17 years before being released.
The two prisoner exchanges would not have occurred without the successful Qatari mediation and the continued effort of the Qatari government to lead the negotiation procedures between the two parties. The success in carrying out the two processes is among the bright spots in the path of mediation between the US and the Taliban.
