A loving married couple with three children will spend their 20th wedding anniversary more than 6,000 miles away from one another — not by choice.
On Feb. 20, 2004, Anna and Ryan Corbett got married in New York before traveling to the United Kingdom and France on their honeymoon. They talked about redoing their honeymoon this February to celebrate two decades of marriage together. But Ryan Corbett can’t be with his wife or children this Tuesday because he’s been wrongfully detained, as determined by the State Department, by the Taliban in Afghanistan for more than a year and a half.
“I’m really sad. It’s been a difficult month. Ryan and my first date was in February, and then we got married in February, so it’s kind of just our month,” Anna Corbett told the Washington Examiner. “And I’m just in shock, I’m completely in shock that we’re apart for this. I never expected last year, when it was our 19th anniversary, that this will still be going on, and on the 20th will be 558 days of separation.”
The Corbetts moved to Afghanistan in 2010 from the United States. Ryan Corbett ultimately started a business consulting and microfinance company in 2017. The family evacuated Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in August 2021 as U.S. troops were leaving for good. Ryan Corbett first returned to Afghanistan in January 2022 to help his business, still running, and had no problems coming home. He was detained when he went in back in August of that year.
Anna and Ryan Corbett have three children, the eldest of whom is navigating the pathway toward going to college. She has the stresses of raising their three children without him and has made it her mission to make sure the State Department does everything in its power to secure Ryan Corbett’s release.
“It’s a daily challenge. Earlier this week, I had a breakdown,” Anna Corbett admitted. “It was tough. Like I just can’t function anymore. Had to take a backseat, honestly, because I couldn’t deal with it, and I’m coping better right now. But life is happening.”
Anna Corbett is worried about her husband’s health, expressing concern about how he appeared in the most recent photo she’s seen of him.
The two have spoken three times in total since Ryan Corbett was detained for a total of 22 minutes. They last spoke on Christmas Day 2023, which is when she also received a photo of her husband. During their Christmas phone call, Ryan Corbett wished his wife an early happy anniversary, knowing there was no certainty he’d speak with her before Tuesday. They haven’t.
Anna Corbett traveled to Washington, D.C., last month, where she met with lawmakers and White House officials to discuss their efforts to secure his release. But since those meetings, she said, she feels like “things are at a standstill.”
“We continue to pursue every lead to bring Ryan Corbett home,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner last month during Anna Corbett’s visit. “The national security adviser spent about an hour with Ryan’s wife last week. Previous meetings have been held with other administration officials as well. In every engagement, U.S. officials have articulated our commitment to getting Ryan home. As you know, we have had small successes like monthly calls home and a recent welfare check.”
Anna Corbett said she’s in “very close contact” with the State Department office that handles wrongful detention cases, adding, “I’m waiting for the next step to be taken, and it’s been a challenge to keep this on the forefront of their work. There are so many priorities and crises in the world and in the U.S. And this is a U.S. citizen who is not doing well, who’s deteriorating.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently spoke about “hostage diplomacy,” or the act of state or nonstate actors detaining innocent civilians for political or nonrelated purposes to use them as bargaining chips.
“Unfortunately, this is part of a rising trend. Increasingly, states, but also nonstate actors, are wrongfully detaining people, often as political pawns,” he said last week during a speech at the Wilson Center. “This practice threatens the safety of everyone who travels, conducts business, who lives abroad. It’s, of course, a brazen violation of individual human rights of the victims, a violation of international law, a violation of state sovereignty, and first and foremost, a violation of their basic humanity.”
The event he spoke at coincided with the third anniversary of the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations, an initiative designed to emphasize the global stance against hostage diplomacy. Seventy-four countries and the European Union have signed on to it as of the anniversary last week.
There are dozens of Americans held by state and nonstate actors whom the department considers wrongfully detained. The administration has successfully negotiated the release of wrongfully detained Americans in Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, and Russia, though dozens more hostages are still being held, all of whom have families, like Anna Corbett and her three children, desperate to see their loved ones again.
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But, as is the point with hostage diplomacy, the U.S. has to give up concessions to whomever it is negotiating with to secure the release of the wrongfully detained American, and at times, that has included the release of arrested and convicted foreign nationals in the U.S.
“Now, bringing people home is our primary focus. But it is not, in and of itself and alone, enough to resolve what is genuinely a crisis. The international community has to join together to deter future detentions so that we can actually put an end to this practice once and for all. And the most effective way to do that is through collective action,” Blinken continued. “I know that homecomings are bittersweet things, even painful things, for the families whose loved ones remain detained. I mean, on the one hand, it’s a reminder that everything is possible and that, yes, we are going to bring their loved one home. But until that day happens, it’s also painful.”
