Afghan Taliban ‘send vehicles to pick up prisoners’ under US deal

The Taliban militant group has sent vehicles to collect jailed militants expected to be released by the Afghan government in a prisoner exchange under a deal that Kabul was not a party to.

A senior Taliban leader in Doha, where the group has an office, said on Tuesday that vehicles had been sent to an area near Bagram Prison, north of the capital, Kabul, to pick up the militants.

“After our conversation with Zalmay Khalilzad (the US special envoy for Afghanistan) on Monday, in which he conveyed to us the release of our 5,000 prisoners, we sent vehicles to pick them up,” he said.

Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman, said in a tweet that his group had handed a detailed list of all the 5,000 prisoners to the US and was waiting for all to be released.

The US signed the “peace” deal with the Taliban on February 29. The Afghan government was a party neither to the talks nor to the agreement that they produced. It has agreed to release the prisoners, nevertheless.

Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, said the government “has reached a framework based on which the release of prisoners will be in exchange for a significant reduction in the level of violence” in the country. The Taliban had been implementing a short truce that was a condition for the deal to be signed. But shortly after the deal was signed, the Taliban started attacking Afghan military posts again.

Ghani had earlier in March said his government had not made a commitment to releasing the prisoners under the US deal.

Afghan President Ghani: Kabul not committed to releasing 5,000 Taliban prisoners

Afghanistan

Some government sources said Monday that between 1,000 and 1,800 Taliban militants could be freed in the initial stage.

A Taliban member in Doha also confirmed the militant group had finalized arrangements for the release of 1,000 prisoners held by the outfit, adding that they had shifted all prisoners to what he called safe locations in Afghanistan.

“We are planning to release the 1,000 prisoners of the Afghan government to the Red Crescent and they could then shift them to their hometowns or pay them cash for traveling home,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

Addressing lawmakers on Saturday, President Ghani pressed for a mechanism to be put in place to ensure that the Taliban prisoners would not go back to militancy after their release.

Last week, Ghani also conditioned the release of the Taliban prisoners on the group breaking ties with neighboring Pakistan, which Afghanistan sees as the main backer of the armed militants.

According to the deal with Taliban, the eventual plan is for the US military to remove all troops from Afghanistan within 14 months if security conditions are met.

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