Marco Rubio Threatens to Set a 'Very Large' Reward for Senior Taliban Leaders

The new U.S. Secretary of State threatened that a reward larger than the one set for Osama bin Laden, the former leader of al-Qaeda, may be established for senior leaders of the Taliban government. Marco Rubio wrote in a post on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, February 26, stating that there may be more American citizens held captive by the Taliban than previously reported: 'If this is true, we must quickly set a very large reward for their leaders, even larger than the bin Laden reward.' The United States had set a reward of $25 million for information leading to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Congress later allowed the Secretary of State to increase this reward to $50 million. It is reported that no one received this reward for bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. military operation in Pakistan. The threat from the new U.S. Secretary of State comes just days after the Taliban and the U.S. exchanged several prisoners in one of the last actions of the Biden administration. Under this agreement, the Taliban released the most well-known American detainee in Afghanistan, Ryan Corbett, who had been living with his family in Afghanistan and was arrested two summers ago. William McKenty, another American about whom little information has been published, was also released. In return, the United States released Khan Mohammad, who was serving a life sentence in a California prison for heroin and opium trafficking to the U.S. and attempting to purchase missiles to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Donald Trump, during his first term, broke a taboo by negotiating directly with the Taliban and even agreed to withdraw American forces and end the longest war in U.S. history with this group, which was then considered a rebel group.