While the Biden administration trumpeted the release Thursday of four Americans, a dozen Germans and one Russian-British dissident in one of the most complex prisoner swaps with Russia since the Cold War, U.S. officials were conspicuously silent about the fate of Austin Tice, the freelance journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012 while covering the civil war there.
Both National Security Council officials and the office of Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, did not respond to queries asking whether Tice’s release was included in the negotiations for the U.S.-Russia prisoner swap, which involved five different countries and were in the works for more than a year. Spokespersons for the congressional intelligence and foreign affairs committees also declined to comment on Tice’s situation.
Russia is a close ally of Syria, wielding considerable influence with its leader, President Bashar al-Assad, since the military assistance it provided him during the country’s civil war is widely credited with saving his regime, and arguably, his life.
But press freedom advocates took note of Tice’s absence from the list of Americans released by Russia , which included journalists Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal; Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British scribe whose work for The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year for commentary.
“We’re very grateful that there are journalists among those who are coming home, but we’re disappointed that Austin Tice was not among them,” said Bill McCarren, who recently stepped down after serving for 15 years as the executive director of the National Press Club and now works as a consultant on press freedom issues.
“Although we understand this was primarily a U.S.-Russia arrangement, there were many other nations involved,” he added in a phone interview. “We would also note that President Assad of Syria was in Russia just last week when this [prisoner swap] was all being planned. We hope that may mean there’s something in the future. We continue to press for Austin’s release.”
According to the FBI, he was kidnapped while reporting in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus.
President Biden has said that he knows “with certainty” that the Syrian regime has held Tice, a Marine Corps combat veteran, since his disappearance and has pledged his administration will work tirelessly to bring him home. “We are extensively engaged with regard to Austin, engaged with Syria, engaged with third countries, seeking to find a way to get him home. And we’re not going to relent until we do,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in remarks last year on World Press Freedom Day.
Though Washington severed diplomatic relations with Damascus in 2012 to protest its brutal crackdown on domestic opponents, it has worked through leaders in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and other friendly Arab countries to arrange quiet meetings with Syrian officials to learn the fate of Tice and other Americans who went missing during the war.
The most recent reported talks took place last year, when U.S. officials met with senior Syrian intelligence and political officials in Muscat, the capital of Oman, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited Middle East officials familiar with the efforts. The Biden administration has refused to confirm the talks, and Syrian officials have said repeatedly they are not holding Tice—who remained in the Marine Corps reserve as a captain after his service in Iraq and Afghanistan—thwarting U.S. efforts to get proof from the Syrians that Tice is still alive.
Such efforts go back to the Trump administration. In September 2020, Kash Patel, a senior official on Trump’s National Security Council, and Roger Carstens, the president’s special envoy for hostage affairs, made a secret visit to Damascus for talks with top Syrian intelligence officials aimed at securing the release of Tice and another U.S. citizen, Majd Kamalmaz, a 62-year-old clinical psychologist from Virginia, who disappeared in 2017 and is believed to be held in a Syrian government prison. That mission produced no results.
At one point, Trump relied on Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, the head of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate, to help arrange talks for Tice’s release. The Lebanese spymaster had successfully arranged the release of Sam Goodwin, a U.S. citizen who was detained at a Syrian government checkpoint in 2019, as well as Canadian Kristian Lee Baxter, an “adventurer” and “world traveller,” according to his mother, who had crossed illegally into Syria from neighboring Lebanon. But Ibrahim also failed to win Tice’s release.
In the past, countries or groups that have taken U.S. citizens hostage haven’t released them unless they won something of value in return. If Tice and the other Americans that Syria is holding are still alive, Syria’s price for their freedom would be steep, former diplomats say.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told SpyTalk that Assad has set a high bar for freeing Tice.
“What Assad wants is an end to U.S. sanctions and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from eastern Syria,” where some 900 American soldiers, including Special Forces, maintain a base to assist local Kurdish forces in preventing any resurgence of ISIS militants in the area.
In May, Debra Tice, Austin’s mother, said that reliable contacts in the Middle East—whom she declined to identify for fear of losing their cooperation—have assured her that her son is indeed alive and being held in a government prison in Damascus. She also said the Biden administration was prolonging Austin’s imprisonment by refusing to negotiate seriously with Syria for his release.
“I don’t understand what the issue is with the United States government engaging with Syria,” she told CBS’ Margaret Brennan.
Mrs. Tice has argued the efforts of U.S. officials to gain her son’s release had “lost their strength,” adding the administration could negotiate without changing its policy toward Damascus. She noted the Biden administration had successfully conducted a prisoner swap with Russia for the release of American basketball player Brittany Griner without softening its policy toward Moscow.
But she also sounded a note of optimism, noting that during a brief audience with Biden at the White House at the end of April, she urged him to arrange another meeting with Syrian officials to pursue Austin’s release.
“He said, ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ so we’ll see where that goes,” she said.
Over the last several weeks, Mrs. Tice has declined to comment on the situation, even as press freedom organizations have continued to run full-page newspaper ads urging her son’s release.
Relevant U.S. officials also have been extremely tight-lipped about his situation, raising hopes that their silence, as with the quiet runup to the complex Russian hostage deal, could mean something’s afoot with Syria.
Another agonizing anniversary of Tice’s capture, meanwhile, arrives on August 14.
This article first appeared on Spytalk.co.
