While playing an instrumental role in hostage release negotiations between Israel and Hamas, Qatar has also quietly emerged as a key intermediary in the case of an American detained by the Taliban who has been languishing in jail in Afghanistan since August 2022 and whose case has attracted growing attention in Washington.
Ryan Corbett, who founded the business consultancy Bloom Afghanistan, was classified by the State Department as wrongfully detained this past September. His family has little information beyond secondhand accounts about his well being, and the only outside visit he has received was from a Qatari official last January — almost a year ago.