My brother is still being held by the Taliban

Mahmood Habibi has languished for two years without Taliban confirmation, despite numerous inquiries from U.S. diplomats.

One year ago, my father wrote an op-ed in this publication describing for the first time the arrest of my brother, Mahmood Habibi, by the Taliban in Kabul. He had been arrested the year prior by the Taliban’s intelligence service, the GDI, along with 30 other people from the same company.

We initially kept it quiet and worked with the State Department in the hope that the Taliban would realize that my brother’s arrest was a mistake. But here we are, and another year has passed and my brother is still not home.

Mahmood is one of the people who designed and built the civil aviation system in Afghanistan. He worked on it when the Americans were in Afghanistan. He then became the deputy minister of Civil Aviation. He eventually left Afghanistan and became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Our family is originally from Kandahar and, heeding the Taliban’s call for skilled people to come back to invest in the future of the country, Mahmood worked for a U.S.-based company and traveled in and out of Kabul without a problem. His last trip into the country was shortly after the U.S. killed Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri in a drone strike.

Over the past two years, we learned that the Taliban thought the company that employed my brother might have been involved in the strike. We can’t speak for the company that employed him, but Mahmood certainly had nothing to do with such activities. Even his return to the country shortly after the strike occurred is evidence that he was unaware of any connection between his employer and this action.

According to a State Department spokesman last month, my brother is one of three Americans who are publicly known to be held by the Taliban government of Afghanistan. Ryan Corbett and George Glezmann are also being held, but the Taliban has admitted they have them and even allowed them to call their families.

Mahmood, on the other hand, has languished for two years without their confirmation, despite numerous inquiries from U.S. diplomats. Mahmood has been deprived of contact with his elderly parents in New Jersey or his wife and young daughter in California, even though Taliban law requires them to allow this contact.

Our family has been working tirelessly to learn all we can. We know from several independent sources in Afghanistan that he is alive and was last known to be in GDI custody. The Taliban has told U.S. diplomats that they do not have him listed as a prisoner. We hope they will take another look, because it does not make sense to us that he was arrested with so many others from the same company, interrogated about the same topic, and held at the same GDI facility, yet the others were released and Mahmood was not.

In mid-July, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that the Taliban was holding Corbett and Glezmann — omitting any mention of my brother. He then said that the Taliban was seeking one Afghan in Guantanamo and two others in U.S. custody. My family knows that there is only one Afghan remaining in Guantanamo, but we do not know the identities of the other two Afghan citizens in the U.S. prison system. We are hopeful that the spokesman’s statement sets the conditions for a three-for-three prisoner exchange.

We have spoken with the State Department and the White House. We have asked them to use all their relationships and capabilities to break the logjam and develop leads in Afghanistan concerning my brother’s location. We know diplomats have met with the Taliban and asked them to move beyond these inexplicable protestations that they do not have him. If the Taliban will not acknowledge him, we hope that there are people who value human life who will come forward and share what they know.

My brother played a pivotal role in building the future of Afghanistan. He did it not for the Americans or the Taliban, but for the people of Afghanistan. His work establishing civil aviation there is enabling development aid and economic assistance to reach a landlocked country with a dispersed population. As the country starts to turn itself toward the upcoming winter — a season that has serious implications for a population with needs that include food, medicine and shelter — it is the system that my brother invested in that will help bring assistance to people in need.

An Afghan delegation recently participated in a UN conference in Doha, Qatar, one step on a long process that will help it engage with other nations and multinational organizations that can ensure the future prosperity of the country. But nothing will move forward until we resolve the arrest of an American citizen and the refusal to acknowledge his detention.

My appeal to the Taliban government is to help us remove this obstacle to progress. Two years is too long. We need my brother home.

Ahmad Shah Habibi is the older brother of Mahmood Habibi.