华盛顿——在拜登政府考虑是否应该在未来几个月从阿富汗撤出剩余的美国军队时，一些人担心一名可能被留下的美国人的命运:一名被绑架的承包商被认为是由一个与塔利班有关的激进组织持有。
在马克·弗里德里希(Mark Frerichs)被绑架一周年之际，家人和其他支持者敦促拜登政府在这位海军老兵获释之前不要撤出更多军队。弗里德里希一年前的周日在该国从事工程项目时被绑架。美国官员认为他被哈卡尼网络拘留，尽管塔利班没有公开承认拘留了他。
他的妹妹夏琳·卡科拉在接受美联社采访时说:“我们相信他还活着，身体健康。”。“我们没有想到他已经死了或者受伤了。”
对美国外交官来说，弗里德里希的被俘是一个更大的地缘政治难题的一部分，该难题旨在平衡在20年冲突后将军队撤回国内与确保地区和平与稳定之间的关系。拜登政府官员明确表示，他们正在审查2020年2月美国和塔利班之间的和平协议，担心塔利班是否履行了减少阿富汗暴力的承诺。
特朗普政府将释放人质和被拘留者作为优先事项，但没有将来自伊利诺伊州伦巴第的弗里茨带回家就结束了。他是拜登政府继承责任的几名美国人之一，包括2012年在叙利亚失踪的记者奥斯汀·蒂斯，以及美国海军陆战队队员特雷弗·里德和密歇根州企业高管保罗·惠兰，两人都被监禁在俄罗斯。
尚不清楚特朗普政府承诺的美国在阿富汗军事存在的减少将在多大程度上(如果有的话)使弗里德里希的命运复杂化。在乔·拜登总统就职前几天，特朗普政府宣布，它已经实现了将驻阿富汗部队人数减少到2500人左右的目标，这是到5月份撤出所有部队的更广泛计划的一部分。
拜登政府必须决定如何处理这一承诺。
新任国务卿安东尼·布林肯(Antony Blinken)周四与阿富汗总统阿什拉夫·加尼(Ashraf Ghani)举行了第一次电话会议，并告诉他政府正在审查和平协议。国务院对谈话的描述没有提到弗里茨。另外，五角大楼表示，塔利班拒绝履行减少阿富汗暴力的承诺，这引发了所有美国军队能否在5月前撤离的问题。
弗里德里希的支持者担心，从阿富汗撤军会使美国没有必要的手段来要求释放他。
来自伊利诺伊州、谭美·达克沃斯和迪克·德宾的两名民主党参议员在给美联社的一封信中写道:“不以释放美国人质为条件的进一步撤军可能会使随后确保他们获释更加困难。”。
在一次采访中，杜克沃斯说她给拜登和布林肯写了信，强调“这需要成为优先事项，我们需要带他回家。”她说，新任国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀已经保证，任何关于军事存在的谈判都将包括关于被拘留者的讨论，“而不是我们单方面撤出那里”。
支持人质的詹姆斯·福利遗产基金会(James W . Foley Legation FoundatiOn)的代表在总统过渡时期的一次谈话中告诉新的国家安全顾问杰克·沙利文(Jake Sullivan)，他们担心弗里德里希斯(Frerichs)和2014年在阿富汗失踪的美国作家保罗·奥弗比(Paul Overby)在与塔利班的讨论中没有得到足够的重视，据该组织的执行主任玛歌·尤恩(Margaux Ewen)说。
国务院出价500万美元获取导致弗里茨返回的信息。
“美国公民马克·弗里茨已经被囚禁了一年。我们不会停止工作，直到我们确保他安全回家，”国务院发言人内德·普莱斯说。
尽管进行了一年稳定的外交谈判，包括11月份与时任国务卿迈克·蓬佩奥、塔利班和阿富汗谈判代表的和平谈判，弗里德里希仍留在阿富汗。美国和塔利班去年2月签署了一项和平协议，但令家人沮丧的是，弗里德里希的返回并没有成为协议的前提，尽管他几周前被绑架了。
卡科拉说:“在马克安全回家之前，我不想让任何部队开始打包出发，因为我认为一旦他们全部离开，我们就没有立足之地了。”。“你不能丢下美国人，我只想确保他安全回家。”
布林肯星期三对记者说，拜登政府希望详细研究这项协议，他说。在决定如何进行之前，“我们需要准确理解协议中的内容”。他说，为了连续性，政府已经要求特朗普的阿富汗问题特使扎勒迈·哈利勒扎德继续留任。
据国务院称，布林肯在第二天与加尼的电话中，对和平进程表示了“坚定的外交支持”，但表示美国正在审查和平协议，以评估塔利班是否履行了他们“与恐怖组织断绝联系”的承诺。
特朗普政府还进行了其他内部政府讨论。
塔利班寻求释放一名因毒品指控在美国被监禁的战斗人员，作为解决与阿富汗问题的更广泛努力的一部分。据一位知情人士透露，这一请求促使国务院和司法部就是否可能释放进行对话，但最终没有进行对话。该人士未被授权讨论私下讨论，并要求匿名。
目前还不清楚这些对话是否会在新政府中出现。
司法部发言人拒绝置评。
Biden faces calls to secure release of US man in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON -- As the Biden administration considers whether it should pull remaining U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in the coming months, some fear for the fate of an American who could be left behind: an abducted contractor believed held by a Taliban-linked militant group.
On the one-year anniversary of Mark Frerichs’ abduction, family members and other supporters are urging the Biden administration not to withdraw additional troops without the Navy veteran being released from captivity. Frerichs was abducted one year ago Sunday while working in the country on engineering projects. U.S. officials believe he is in the custody of the Haqqani network, though the Taliban have not publicly acknowledged holding him.
“We are confident that he's still alive and well,” his sister, Charlene Cakora, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We don't have any thinking that he's dead or that he's injured.”
For U.S. diplomats, Frerichs' captivity is a piece of a much larger geopolitical puzzle that aims to balance bringing troops home, after a two-decade conflict, with ensuring regional peace and stability. Biden administration officials have made clear that they are reviewing a February 2020 peace deal between the United States and the Taliban, concerned by whether the Taliban are meeting its commitment to reduce violence in Afghanistan.
The Trump administration, which had made the release of hostages and detainees a priority, ended without having brought home Frerichs, who is from Lombard, Illinois. He is one of several Americans the Biden administration is inheriting responsibility for, including journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, as well as U.S. Marine Trevor Reed and Michigan corporate executive Paul Whelan, both of whom are imprisoned in Russia.
It is unclear to what extent, if at all, Frerichs' fate will be complicated by the declining American military presence in Afghanistan committed to by the Trump administration. Days before President Joe Biden took office, the Trump administration announced that it had met its goal of reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan to about 2,500, part of a broader plan to remove all forces by May.
The Biden administration must determine how to handle that commitment.
New Secretary of State Antony Blinken held his first call Thursday with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and told him the administration was reviewing the peace deal. A State Department description of the conversation did not mention Frerichs. Separately, the Pentagon said the Taliban’s refusal to meet commitments to reduce violence in Afghanistan is raising questions about whether all U.S. troops will be able to leave by May.
Frerichs' supporters are concerned that a drawdown of military personnel from Afghanistan leaves the U.S. without the leverage it needs to demand his release.
“Further troop withdrawals that are not conditioned upon the release of American hostages will likely make it harder to subsequently secure their release,” the two Democratic senators from Illinois, Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, wrote Biden in a letter provided to the AP.
In an interview, Duckworth said she wrote Biden and Blinken to stress “that this needs to be a priority, that we need to bring him home.” She said Lloyd Austin, the new defense secretary, had given assurances that any negotiations about military presence would include discussion about detainees “as opposed to us just unilaterally pulling out of there.”
Representatives of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which advocates for hostages, told new national security adviser Jake Sullivan in a conversation during the presidential transition period about concerns that Frerichs and Paul Overby, an American writer who disappeared in Afghanistan in 2014, weren't adequately prioritized during discussions with the Taliban, according to the organization's executive director, Margaux Ewen.
The State Department is offering $5 million for information leading to Frerichs' return.
“American citizen Mark Frerichs has spent a year in captivity. We will not stop working until we secure his safe return home,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price.
Frerichs remains in Afghanistan despite a year of steady diplomatic negotiations, including peace talks in November with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Taliban and Afghan negotiators. The U.S. and Taliban signed a peace deal last February, but much to the family's frustration, Frerichs' return was not made a predicate for the agreement even though he had been abducted weeks earlier.
“I don’t want any troops to start packing up and heading out until Mark gets home safely, because I don't think we really have a leg to stand on once they're all out of there,” Cakora said. “You don’t leave Americans behind, and I just really want to make sure that he’s home safe.”
Blinken told reporters Wednesday that the Biden administration wanted to take a detailed look at that deal, saying. “We need to understand exactly what is in the agreement” before deciding how to proceed. He said the administration had asked Trump’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, to remain on the job for continuity’s sake.
In his call with Ghani the following day, according to the State Department, Blinken expressed “robust diplomatic support” for the peace process but said the U.S. was reviewing the peace deal to assess whether the Taliban were living up to their commitment to “cut ties with terrorist groups.”
There were other internal government discussions in the Trump administration.
The Taliban had sought the release of a combatant imprisoned on drug charges in the U.S. as part a broader effort to resolve issues with Afghanistan. The request prompted dialogue between the State Department and the Justice Department about whether such a release could happen, though it ultimately did not, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss the private discussions and spoke on condition of anonymity.
It is unclear whether those conversations will pick up in the new administration.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
