This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor. I welcome my good colleagues, Bill Rajo, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, a senior fellow, keeping a long war journal, and Ambassador Hussain O'Connor, former ambassador from Pakistan to the United States,

now a senior fellow and in charge of the Eurasia Project at the Hudson Institute.

Gentlemen, we begin with good news.

It's rare from South Asia.

It's rare.

But here it is.

American citizen released by Taliban nine months after arrest in Afghanistan.

Amir Amiri, an American citizen, detained nine months in Afghanistan, was released Sunday and is on his way back to the United States, according to the Secretary of State, Mr. Rubio.

Mr. Rubio's quote, today we welcome home Amir Amiri,

an American who was wrongfully detained in Afghanistan.

I want to thank Qatar for helping secure his freedom.

I begin here because South Asia is a many splendid and non-transparent creature. Afghanistan is not trusted anywhere.

Kabul is in the hands of men who routinely welcome and host al-Qaeda and worse. At the same time,

there are American citizens that have been held for some time,

and there was very little hope that anything could be done for them from the outside. Mr. Rubio

has been successful on the inside. Why? What is the leverage here? Mr. Ambassador, I begin

with you, because your thoughts these last weeks

about the president's remark that it'd be good to get back into Bagram Air Base, which

was left in August of 2021 by order of the Biden administration, saying that they were following

through on the Doha deal negotiated by the

Trump administration. Since then, there have been many questions about the citizens left

behind who were owed a security by the United States or its allies, Great Britain. And some of

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