The failure of the Kabul-Taliban plan to swap the two professors from the American University in Afghanistan for three militants has prompted the head of the lower house of the Afghan parliament to suggest that the Western hostages may not be alive
KABUL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th November, 2019) The failure of the Kabul-Taliban plan to swap the two professors from the American University in Afghanistan for three militants has prompted the head of the lower house of the Afghan parliament to suggest that the Western hostages may not be alive.As the cause why the prisoner exchange did not take place on schedule remains unknown, speaker Mir Rahman Rahmani said that the men might have been killed.
Earlier this week, the Afghan government announced that it would release one of the senior leaders of the Haqqani insurgent group, Anas Haqqani, as well as key Taliban commanders Hafiz Rashid and Mali Khan in exchange for the US and Australian academics, who were kidnapped in Kabul, where they worked at the American University, in 2016.
The exchange was ultimately put on hold for unknown reasons. The Taliban have claimed that they refused to hand over the Western hostages while the movement's affiliates remained captive.
