An Australian teacher who was kidnapped in Kabul by Taliban forces in 2016, then held hostage for three years before being released in an exchange deal with U.S. officials, returned here Friday and announced that he planned to \u201ccelebrate\u201d the upcoming first anniversary of Taliban rule.
Timothy Weeks, 53, arrived at Kabul\u2019s international airport clad in a black tribal turban and white Afghan tunic. He told waiting journalists that he had first come to Afghanistan \u201cwith a dream to learn about Afghanistan, and now I\u2019m coming again to complete my journey.\u201d
Weeks converted to Islam during more than three years in Taliban captivity and changed his name to Baar Muad Jibra\u2019il after returning home. During his many months as a prisoner he \u201csaw these people in a light that nobody else has been able to do,\u201d he said, adding that he has long \u201cstood behind\u201d the Taliban and continues to do so.
He recently announced to Australian press his plan to return for the anniversary of Taliban rule, saying he now considers himself \u201can Afghan and a Pashtun,\u201d the ethnic group of the Taliban, and that he wants to help the Afghan people through a new charity in Australia. The country is facing a severe humanitarian crisis, with many Afghans unable to find enough food, according to international aid groups.
\u201cI ask the world to understand the Taliban and give them time,\u201d Weeks said in a recent interview with Turkish media.
But Weeks\u2019s visit and supportive comments toward the Taliban drew immediate criticism from international human rights groups, many of which have recently denounced the regime for suppressing women\u2019s rights and refusing to let teenage girls attend school.
Zaki Haidari, a refugee rights advocate at Amnesty International in Australia, told broadcaster SBS that Weeks\u2019s visit to Kabul was \u201coutrageous\u201d and \u201cbrings a lot of anger and frustration\u201d to the large community of Afghan refugees and exiles.
\u201cWhat is there to celebrate?\u201d Haidari said Saturday. \u201cThe fact they are violating women\u2019s rights, that they are not allowing girls to go to school, and leaving millions of people to poverty and hunger, including children?\u201d
Weeks has described himself as spiritually transformed by his experiences in captivity. Despite being beaten, deprived of food, kept in solitary confinement and becoming severely ill, he has said in interviews that he came to \u201cadore\u201d the Afghan people, and also told an interviewer that he admired the Taliban fighters for their tenacity.
Weeks was one of two faculty members kidnapped in August 2016 from a van near the American University in Afghanistan, a large private institution in Kabul where he had been teaching English for several months. The other was an American, Kevin King, 13 years older than Weeks, who had taught English there for two years.
Soon after they were abducted, U.S. Navy SEALs unsuccessfully attempted to rescue the captives in a secret raid in rural eastern Afghanistan. In early 2017, both men appeared in an emotional 13-minute video filmed by their captors, looking weak and haggard. Both pleaded for the U.S. government to negotiate their release in exchange for Taliban prisoners being held in U.S. military custody.
But it was not until two years later that the men were released in an exchange for three senior Taliban members. One of them was Anas Haqqani, now a top member of the current Taliban leadership in Kabul. In 2020, Weeks met Haqqani in Qatar, where they exchanged notes and found something in common: They had both written poetry in captivity.
In contrast to Weeks, King has kept a low profile since his release and has been reported to suffer ongoing health problems. He is now nearing 70.
Weeks\u2019s public praise for the Taliban, just days before the first anniversary of its takeover of the country, stands in sharp contrast to the concerns many international groups and Western governments have expressed recently about the Kabul regime\u2019s tightening repression of women, as well as other serious problems.
\u201cThe last year, since the Taliban takeover on August 15, 2021, has been an absolute disaster for human rights in Afghanistan,\u201d Heather Barr, an associate director at Human Rights Watch in New York, wrote in a recent report.
She said Afghans have been facing \u201ctwo different extremely severe crises at the same time\u201d: a humanitarian crisis driven by the cutoff of foreign aid and funds; and an \u201cattack on human rights, with extrajudicial killings, attacks on media freedom and very notably a rollback of most of the rights of women and girls.\u201d
Taliban officials have struggled to organize a government and provide services to 39 million people after years of fighting a guerrilla war.
They have also faced internal tensions between moderate officials who want to modernize the country while observing Islamic laws, and more doctrinaire, senior religious leaders who reject Western society and seek to restore the harsh Islamist way of life that characterized their first period in power, between 1996 and 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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