George Glezmann, who was detained in December 2022 while visiting as a tourist, arrived by plane in Qatar on Thursday evening before travelling back to the US.

His release was confirmed after the Taliban government’s foreign minister hosted US hostage envoy Adam Boehler and other US officials in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The Taliban’s foreign ministry said Mr Glezmann’s release was “on humanitarian grounds” and “a goodwill gesture”, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the deal a “positive and constructive step”.

The meeting between the US delegation and the Taliban amounted to the highest-level direct talks between the two parties since US President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January.

Boehler was accompanied at the meeting by the US’s former envoy to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, according to the Afghan foreign ministry.

Contact between the two governments has usually taken place in other countries since the Taliban regained power in 2021.

Qatar said it facilitated the deal to release Mr Glezmann.

In a post on X, Afghanistan’s foreign ministry added that the deal showed “Afghanistan’s readiness to genuinely engaging all sides, particularly the United States of America, on the basis of mutual respect and interests”.

Rubio said that Mr Glezmann, a 65-year-old Delta Air Lines mechanic, would soon be reunited with his wife, Aleksandra, and thanked Qatar for its “instrumental” role in securing the release.

He was pictured at Kabul airport on Thursday before boarding a flight to Qatar, accompanied by Boehler, Khalilzad and Qatari officials.

The James Foley Foundation, which monitors cases of Americans detained overseas, said Mr Glezmann had “periodic and limited telephone contact” with his wife while detained.

His health was also said to have “deteriorated significantly while he had been in detention”, and he had “medical issues that require immediate care”.

Rubio added that Mr Glezmann’s release was “also a reminder that other Americans are still detained in Afghanistan”.

One of those US citizens is believed to be Mahmood Habibi, who was detained in August 2022.

Before Trump took office in January, two Americans, Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McKenty, were released from Afghanistan in exchange for an Afghan imprisoned in the US.

Khan Mohmmad was serving a life sentence in a federal prison in California on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

Funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), their scholarships were abruptly terminated after a funding freeze ordered by President Donald Trump when he returned to office in January.

“It was heart-breaking,” one student told the BBC, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals. “Everyone was shocked and crying. We’ve been told we will be sent back within two weeks.”

Since regaining power nearly four years ago, the Taliban has imposed draconian restrictions on women, including banning them from universities.

The Trump administration’s aid freeze has faced legal roadblocks, but thousands of humanitarian programmes around the world have already been terminated as the White House dismantles USAID and cuts tens of billions of dollars in spending.

The students in Oman say preparations are under way to return them to Afghanistan, and have appealed to the international community to “intervene urgently”.

The BBC has seen emails sent to the 82 students informing them that their scholarships have been “discontinued” due to the termination of the programme and USAID funding.

The emails – which acknowledge the news will be “profoundly disappointing and unsettling” – refer to travel arrangements back to Afghanistan, which caused alarm among the students.

“We need immediate protection, financial assistance and resettlement opportunities to a safe country where we can continue our education,” one told the BBC.

The USAID website’s media contact page remains offline. The BBC has contacted the US State Department for comment.

The Afghan women, now facing a forced return from Oman, had been pursuing graduate and post-graduate courses under the Women’s Scholarship Endowment (WSE), a USAID programme which began in 2018.

It provided scholarships for Afghan women to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the disciplines banned for women by the Taliban.

Just over a week ago, the students were told their scholarships had been terminated.

“It’s like everything has been taken away from me,” another student told the BBC. “It was the worst moment. I’m under extreme stress right now.”

These women, mostly aged in their 20s, qualified for scholarships in 2021 before the Taliban seized Afghanistan. Many continued their studies in Afghan universities until December 2022, when the Taliban banned higher education for women.

After 18 months in limbo, they said they fled to Pakistan last September.

USAID then facilitated their visas to Oman, where they arrived between October and November 2024.

“If we are sent back, we will face severe consequences. It would mean losing all our dreams,” a student said. “We won’t be able to study and our families might force us to get married. Many of us could also be at personal risk due to our past affiliations and activism.”

The Taliban has cracked down on women protesting for education and work, with many activists beaten, detained and threatened.

Women in Afghanistan describe themselves as “dead bodies moving around” under the regime’s brutal policies.

The Taliban government says it has been trying to resolve the issue of women’s education, but has also defended its supreme leader’s diktats, saying they are “in accordance with Islamic Sharia law”.

“Afghanistan is experiencing gender apartheid, with women systematically excluded from basic rights, including education,” a student said.

She and her friends in Oman had managed to escape that fate, as the scholarships were supposed to fund their education until 2028.

“When we came here, our sponsors told us to not go back to Afghanistan till 2028 for vacations or to visit our families because it’s not safe for us. And now they’re telling us to go,” a student said.

Last month, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly blamed the situation for Afghan women on the US military’s withdrawal from the country under the Democrats, telling the Washington Post: “Afghan women are suffering because Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal allowed the Taliban to impose mediaeval Sharia law policies.”

The decision to slash American aid funding has come under the Trump administration, and been implemented by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

And these women face a grim future, urgently seeking a lifeline before time runs out.

Peter Reynolds, 79, and his wife Barbie, 75, were arrested on 1 February while returning to their home in the country’s Bamiyan province.

An American national and an Afghan were also arrested alongside the couple, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior Affairs said.

The UK Foreign Office said on Monday it was supporting their family.

In a statement, Taliban official Abdul Mateen Qani said: “A series of considerations is being taken into account, and after evaluation, we will endeavour to release them as soon as possible.”

All three foreign nationals had Afghan passports and national ID cards, he added.

The reason for Mr and Mrs Reynolds’s arrest has not been confirmed.

The couple had been running training projects in Afghanistan for18 years, including one that involved training mothers and children.

Their work had apparently been approved by the local authorities, despite the Taliban banning education for girls over the age of 12 and not allowing women to work.

The pair married in Kabul in 1970. They remained in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, which saw most westerners leave the country.

Their daughter, Sarah Entwistle, told the BBC she had not heard from her parents in more than two weeks.

They had communicated by text after the pair were initially arrested, but contact stopped after three days.

Ms Entwistle and her siblings wrote to the Taliban to plead for their parents’ release.

“We recognise that there have been instances where exchanges have been beneficial for your government and western nations,” they wrote.

“However, our parents have consistently expressed their commitment to Afghanistan, stating that they would rather sacrifice their lives than become part of ransom negotiations or be traded.”

On Monday, she told Times Radio they were now “urgently calling on the British consulate to do everything in their power to get us answers and to put as much pressure as they can on the Taliban for their release”.

Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to suspect Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani bore criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity on gender grounds.

ICC judges will now decide whether to issue an arrest warrant.

The ICC investigates and brings to justice those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, intervening when national authorities cannot or will not prosecute.

In a statement, Mr Khan said the two men were “criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women, as well as persons whom the Taliban perceived as not conforming with their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression, and persons whom the Taliban perceived as allies of girls and women”.

Opposition to the Taliban government is “brutally repressed through the commission of crimes including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts”, he added.

The persecution was committed from at least 15 August 2021 until the present day, across Afghanistan, the statement said.

Akhundzada became the supreme commander of the Taliban in 2016, and is now leader of the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In the 1980s, he participated in Islamist groups fighting against the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan.

Haqqani was a close associate of Taliban founder Mullah Omar and served as a negotiator on behalf of the Taliban during discussions with US representatives in 2020.

The ICC prosecutor’s office told the BBC that issues slowed down the pace of the investigation, including “the lack of cooperation” from the Taliban authorities.

“Due to fear, individuals with important information for the investigation are frequently unwilling to come forward,” the office added.

The Taliban government is yet to comment on the ICC statement.

Nader Nadery, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Wilson Center who participated in peace talks between the previous Afghan government and the Taliban, said that many Afghan women had been waiting for this moment.

“While it might not immediately change things, it sends a strong message that there won’t be impunity,” he told the BBC.

“It builds hope for many of those activists and Afghan women on the ground that probably there is a way forward and keeping that hope alive, I believe, is a major contribution immediately.”

The Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in 2021, 20 years after a US-led invasion toppled their regime in the fallout of the 9/11 attacks in New York, but its government has not been formally recognised by any other foreign power.

“Morality laws” have since meant women have lost dozens of rights on the country.

Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where women and girls are prevented from accessing secondary and higher education – some one-and-a-half million have been deliberately deprived of schooling.

The Taliban has repeatedly promised they would be re-admitted to school once a number of issues were resolved – including ensuring the curriculum was “Islamic”. This has yet to happen.

Beauty salons have been shut down and women are prevented from entering public parks, gyms and baths.

A dress code means they must be fully covered and strict rules have banned them from travelling without a male chaperone or looking a man in the eye unless they’re related by blood or marriage.

In December, women were also banned from training as midwives and nurses, effectively closing off their last route to further education in the country.

The news emerged after Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McKenty were freed. The Afghan, Khan Mohmmad, had been serving a life sentence in a federal prison in California on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

A statement from the Taliban government in Kabul announced the agreement, which was concluded just before President Joe Biden ended his term in office.

Mr Corbett’s release was confirmed by his family. US media, quoting official sources, identified Mr McKenty as the second American.

The deal – reportedly the culmination of two years of negotiations – was done just before Joe Biden handed over power to Donald Trump on Monday.

“An Afghan fighter Khan Mohammed imprisoned in America has been released in exchange for American citizens and returned to the country,” the Taliban foreign ministry said in a statement.

The family of Ryan Corbett thanked both administrations as well as Qatar for what they described as its vital role.

“Today, our hearts are filled with overwhelming gratitude and praise to God for sustaining Ryan’s life and bringing him back home after what has been the most challenging and uncertain 894 days of our lives,” the family said.

Mr Corbett had lived in Afghanistan for many years with his family and was detained by the Taliban more than two years ago when he returned on a business trip.

There are few details about Mr McKenty, whose family have asked for privacy.

Khan Mohammad was a member of the Taliban taken captive in Afghanistan during the US’s military engagement. He was jailed in 2008. Joe Biden commuted his sentence just before he left office.

The Taliban called the exchange the result of “long and fruitful negotiations” with the US and “a good example of resolving issues through dialogue”.

“The Islamic Emirate looks positively at the actions of the United States of America that help the normalisation and development of relations between the two countries,” it said.

Since the Taliban took power in 2021, they have not been formally recognised by any government.

While the move is not likely to change relations between Kabul and Washington, more negotiations may follow – two other Americans are still in Afghanistan, believed to be George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi.

The Taliban are also seeking the release of an Afghan who is one of the few remaining prisoners at the US’s Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

At a rally in Washington on the eve of his inauguration, President Trump threatened to cut humanitarian aid to Afghanistan unless the Taliban returned the military equipment seized after the US pulled out in 2021.

A US Department of Defense report in 2022 estimated that military equipment worth $7bn had been left behind in Afghanistan after US forces withdrew.

Taliban’s ascension was seen as a boost to the regional influence of Pakistan, long regarded as the patron of the Afghan group in pursuit of “strategic depth” for Islamabad.

This  doctrine reflected Pakistan’s military interest in maintaining a strategic hold over Afghanistan through the Taliban and using it as leverage against India, its traditional adversary.

Three years later, that calculation appears to have flopped, instead leaving Pakistan’s officials fuming at ties with Kabul even as the Taliban edges closer to an unlikely partner: India.

India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met acting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai last week, marking the highest-profile public engagement between New Delhi and the Taliban. That meeting followed a series of steps taken by both sides that suggest a dramatic break from a quarter century of animus and distrust rooted in Pakistan’s support of the Taliban.

If this shift leads to an expansion of Indian influence in Afghanistan, that could strain Islamabad-Kabul ties, warned Iftikhar Firdous, co-founder of The Khorasan Diary, a portal tracking regional security issues. “Ultimately, the Afghan people, reliant on Pakistan’s borders, will bear the brunt of this tug-of-war,” he told Al Jazeera.

From  the 1980s when it backed the mujahideen against the Soviet Union through the first two decades of the 21st century, Pakistan was a primary backer of the Taliban, many of whose leaders found shelter on Pakistani soil.

India, by contrast, viewed the group as a Pakistani proxy, shuttering its embassy in Kabul after the Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan in 1996. It blamed the Taliban and its current allies in the government, including the Haqqanis, for repeatedly attacking Indian diplomatic missions in Afghanistan — the embassy in 2008 and 2009, and the Indian consulates in Jalalabad in 2013, Herat in 2014 and Mazar-i-Sharif in 2015.

Yet, a decade later, those equations no longer stand.

December 2024 saw Pakistan and Afghanistan exchanging strikes on each other’s territories, as Pakistan faced its deadliest year of violence, particularly against its law enforcement, since 2016. Pakistan said it was targeting Afghan bases of the Pakistan Taliban armed group, known by the acronym TTP, which Islamabad accuses the Afghan Taliban of harbouring.

Meanwhile, India appeared to have recalibrated its approach, engaging diplomatically with Taliban officials.

The first significant meeting took place in Kabul in November 2024, when JP Singh, joint secretary of India’s Ministry of External Affairs overseeing the Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran desk, met acting Afghan Defence Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob.

A week later, the Taliban nominated Ikramuddin Kamil as their envoy to New Delhi, even though India is yet to formally recognise the current rulers of Kabul.

And after last week’s meeting between Misri and Muttaqi, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs described India as a “significant regional and economic partner”.

Some Pakistani analysts say Islamabad has no reason to worry — at least yet.

Asif Durrani, a former Pakistani special representative to Afghanistan, said that Pakistan and Kabul share a relationship deeper than what New Delhi and Kabul share. “India left Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover and has now returned upon assessing mutual business opportunities. Both India and Afghanistan are sovereign nations free to forge ties,” Durrani told Al Jazeera. “Pakistan may not object unless these relations become inimical to its interests,” he added.

Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United Nations, United States, and the United Kingdom, echoed this sentiment.

“Landlocked Afghanistan depends principally on Pakistan for trade as well as transit trade. Geography does not change just because India now seeks closer ties with Kabul,” she told Al Jazeera.

But while Afghanistan’s geography hasn’t changed, much else has, in recent years.

While India has poured in more than $3bn in Afghanistan during the last two decades, the primary trade route for the Afghan government remains the Pakistani border, where tensions have been escalating, as Islamabad’s worries about TTP attacks have grown.

The TTP, founded in 2007, shares ideological roots with the Afghan Taliban and has waged a violent rebellion against Pakistan. Data from last year showed more than 600 attacks in Pakistan, resulting in about 1,600 deaths, including nearly 700 law enforcement personnel. Most of these attacks were claimed by the TTP.

Pakistan has held multiple meetings with Afghan authorities, including a visit by its special representative, Mohammad Sadiq, in December after a TTP attack killed 16 Pakistani soldiers.

However, during Sadiq’s visit, who is serving his second tenure in this role, Pakistan’s military launched air attacks in Bermal, a district bordering Pakistan. The Afghan government, which denies sheltering armed groups, stated that the strikes killed at least 46 people, including women and children. Merely days later, Afghan Taliban retaliated, saying they targeted “several points” in Pakistan.

Lodhi pointed to Sadiq’s reappointment as special representative as a sign of efforts to repair ties. “Pakistan and Afghanistan are diplomatically re-engaging to reset relations after a year of intense tensions. Improved relations are a strategic imperative for both nations,” she said.

But the meeting between Misri and Muttaqi last week also included a conversation on a subject that some experts say could be another layer of complexity to Pakistan’s ties with the Afghan Taliban: development of Iran’s Chabahar port by India.

The  Afghan Foreign Ministry, in its statement on the meeting between Muttaqi and Misri, said they spoke about enhancing trade using Chabahar port, which can help otherwise landlocked Afghanistan bypass Pakistan to receive and send goods.

Chabahar is in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province, just across the border from Pakistan’s Balochistan province — a resource-rich part of the country where Islamabad has long battled separatist groups. Many of these rebels have sought refuge in Iran.

Iran launched air raids on Pakistani soil in January 2024, targeting alleged hideouts of anti-Tehran armed groups that have found shelter in Balochistan. Pakistan also retaliated with its strikes.

While tensions between Iran and Pakistan following those strikes eased, Islamabad has long accused New Delhi of fomenting the Baloch nationalist movement.

Pakistan has cited the 2016 arrest of Kulbhushan Yadav, alleged by Islamabad to be an Indian spy operating in Balochistan. India denies the charges, claiming Yadav was abducted from Iran.

“Indian involvement in Balochistan and its support for separatists is a longstanding Pakistani narrative, underscored by Yadav’s capture,” Firdous said.

Against that backdrop, “references to Chabahar port and its involvement in Afghan-Indian trade will be seen by Pakistan as interventionist,” the Peshawar-based analyst added.

India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met acting Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai on Wednesday, reports said.

In  a statement later, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they discussed expanding their relations and boosting trade through Chabahar Port in Iran, which India has been developing for goods to bypass the ports of Karachi and Gwadar in its rival Pakistan.

“In line with Afghanistan’s balanced and economy-focused foreign policy, the Islamic Emirate aims to strengthen political and economic ties with India as a significant regional and economic partner,” the statement said.

India’s foreign ministry said in a statement after the meeting that New Delhi was considering engaging in development projects in Afghanistan and looking to boost trade ties.

India, which hosts thousands of Afghan refugees, also said it will provide “material support” for their rehabilitation back home. Some one million refugees have been repatriated by Pakistan and Iran to Afghanistan since late 2023.

“In  response to the request from the Afghan side, India will provide further material support in the first instance to the health sector and for the rehabilitation of refugees,” India’s foreign ministry said in its statement.

Afghan officials say they have already begun distributing land among the repatriated Afghan refugees.

India also said it offered additional support to the Afghan health sector as the two countries discussed strengthening of sports ties, particularly in cricket.

No foreign government, including India, officially recognises the Taliban administration. Yet in June 2022, less than a year after the Taliban returned to power, India reopened its embassy in Kabul, sending a team of “technical experts” to run the mission.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s embassy in New Delhi was closed in November 2023 after diplomats appointed by the Afghan government ousted by the Taliban failed to secure visa extensions from their Indian hosts.

However, in November last year, the Taliban announced the appointment of Ikramuddin Kamil as its acting consul in Mumbai.

India is also one of several countries to facilitate trade, aid and medical support and has sent humanitarian aid to Afghanistan under the Taliban.

New Delhi has so far dispatched several shipments consisting of wheat, medicines, COVID vaccines, and winter clothing to Afghanistan.

Wednesday’s meeting came amid rising tensions between Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan, which last week launched an operation to destroy what it called armed groups in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province. Islamabad claims the Pakistan Taliban group uses Afghan soil to launch attacks in Pakistan, a charge Kabul denies.

The strikes killed dozens of people, primarily women and children. Earlier this week, India’s foreign office told journalists they condemned the air strikes conducted on Afghan soil.

India and Pakistan have long been rivals and have fought three wars over Kashmir since they won independence from Britain in 1947.

On Wednesday, the Afghan side underlined its sensitivities to India’s security concerns and said they “agreed to remain in touch and continue regular contact at various levels,” the Indian statement said.

“Education holds a central place in Islamic teachings, emphasising the pursuit of knowledge for both men and women,” Afghanistan’s T20 captain Rashid wrote in a social media post on Wednesday.

“The Quran highlights the importance of learning and acknowledges the equal spiritual worth of both genders,” he added.

Earlier this week the Taliban announced their decision to forbid older girls and women from receiving medical education and training, closing all avenues for them to become doctors, nurses or midwives.

Rashid, who said he was speaking out in support of his Afghan “sisters and mothers”, believes the decision will profoundly affect Afghan women’s future as well as “the broader fabric of society”.

The 26-year-old global icon of the sport said the country “desperately needs professionals in every field, especially the medical sector”.

He pointed to Afghan women’s expression of “pain and sorrow” through social media as a “poignant reminder of the struggles they face”.

In a detailed post, written in both English and his native Dari language, Rashid said: “The acute shortage of female doctors and nurses is particularly concerning, as it directly impacts the healthcare and dignity of women.

”It is essential for our sisters and mothers to have access to care provided by medical professionals who truly understand their needs.”

The all-rounder, who consistently ranks among the world’s top players in limited-overs cricket, urged the Taliban to reconsider their decision.

“Providing education to all is not just a societal responsibility but a moral obligation deeply rooted in our faith and values,” he concluded.

A few hours after Rashid’s outpouring of concern and support, former captain Nabi, too, raised the issue on X.

“The Taliban’s decision to ban girls from studying medicine is not only heartbreaking but deeply unjust,” Nabi wrote.

The veteran all-rounder, who has been representing Afghanistan since 2009, pointed to the importance placed on education in Islam and asked the Taliban to reflect on the religion’s values.

“Denying girls the chance to learn and serve their people is a betrayal of both their dreams and our nation’s future. Let our daughters study, grow, and build a better Afghanistan for everyone. This is their right, and it is our duty to protect it,” Nabi added.

Human Rights Watch has criticised the move, which it said “closed one of the last remaining loopholes in their [Taliban’s] ban on education for older girls and women”.

The rights body said the ban would result in “unnecessary pain, misery, sickness, and death for the women forced to go without healthcare, as there won’t be female healthcare workers to treat them”.

At least 1.4 million school-age Afghan girls are being “deliberately deprived” of their right to an education, according to the United Nations, which has said the Taliban government has put “the future of an entire generation in jeopardy”.

Afghanistan is the only country in the world to stop girls and women from attending secondary schools and universities.

The Taliban administration, which is not recognised by any other country, has imposed restrictions on women that the UN has described as “gender apartheid”.