KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban released a video Wednesday purportedly showing two Western hostages, including an American, tearfully urging President-elect Donald Trump to negotiate with their captors to secure their release.
American Kevin King and an Australian, Timothy Weeks, were abducted in August outside Kabul’s American University of Afghanistan, where the two worked as English professors. U.S. Special Operations forces almost immediately launched a raid to rescue them, but did not find the hostages at the compound where they were thought to be held.
The video emerged hours after the United Arab Emirates announced that five of its diplomats were killed Tuesday in blasts in Kandahar, underscoring the threats to foreigners working and living in Afghanistan.
The 13-minute video could not be independently verified, but it was emailed to reporters by a Taliban spokesman and circulated by the group’s social media accounts.
Sitting in front of a light purple curtain, the two professors wept as they urged the U.S. government to agree to a prisoner exchange that would allow them to go free. The men appeared pale and were short of breath when speaking, and they often sobbed.
They gave the date as Jan. 1 and said they had “been here for five months,” without specifying their location. No other people were shown in the video clip.
“This is a message for the President-elect Donald Trump,” the 49-year-old Weeks said to the camera. “I ask you, please … please negotiate with the Taliban. If you do not negotiate with them, we will be killed.”
The Taliban, he said, wanted its members released from detention centers at Bagram air base and Pul-i-Charki prison.
“I don’t know how much longer I can go,” Weeks said. “I don’t want to die here.”
How Trump plans to handle Afghanistan’s deepening political and security crises is unclear. Roughly 10,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, training Afghan forces and carrying out counterterrorism operations. The U.S. announced this month it would send an additional 300 Marines to Helmand province to advise and assist Afghan troops.
On Tuesday, more than 40 people were killed in a string of bombings in three major cities, including the capital.
At a meeting between Afghan and Emirati officials in Kandahar, three bombs exploded in quick succession, wounding the governor of Kandahar and the UAE ambassador to Afghanistan. Twelve others were killed.
The Kandahar region is a Taliban stronghold, but the militants denied responsibility for the explosions, instead blaming them on an “internal dispute” between Afghan government officials. The group often denies roles in attacks that could provoke a local backlash.
However, the militants did assert responsibility for two bomb attacks Tuesday in Kabul and the Helmand provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Together, those blasts killed more than 40 people and injured close to 100.
The Kandahar bombing was the deadliest attack on UAE diplomats in that country’s 45-year history, and it struck at a nation with deep and complicated relations in Afghanistan.
The UAE has given billions in aid to the Western-backed governments that took over after the Taliban fell in 2001. But, before that, the UAE was among the few nations that recognized the Taliban government, and the UAE’s financial hub, Dubai, has come under scrutiny as a haven for money funneled out of Afghanistan.
The UAE also contributed combat troops to the NATO mission training Afghan security forces.
The Emirati diplomats were in Kandahar, along with several other Afghan officials, on a “humanitarian mission,” the UAE Foreign Ministry said. It added that the UAE government planned to finance a technical institute and offer scholarships to Afghan students.
