Afghanistan voted on Sunday to release 400 “hardcore” Taliban prisoners, paving the way for peace talks aimed at ending nearly two decades of war.
Under pressure from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s election year for a deal that allowed him to bring American troops home, the war-torn country’s large assembly, like Loya Jirga, on Sunday approved the release, a controversial one. condition raised by the Taliban militants for participating in peace talks.
“To remove an obstacle, allow the beginning of the peace process and an end to bloodshed, the Loya Jirga approves the release of 400 Taliban,” the assembly said in a resolution.
Minutes later, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced: “Today I will sign the release order for these 400 prisoners.”
Last week, Ghani invited some 3,200 Afghan community leaders and politicians to Kabul amid tight security and concerns over the Covid-19 pandemic, to advise the government on whether to release the prisoners.
Among the 400 Taliban members accused of major attacks on civilians and foreigners, including a 2017 truck bombing near the German embassy in Kabul that killed more than 150 – the deadliest attack on the 19-year-old uprising. Taliban and official sources have said the group includes members of the militant Haqqani network, which has ties to the Taliban.
With the release, the Afghan government will fulfill its promise to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners.
Talks between the fighting Taliban and the government would begin this week in Doha, Qatar, Western diplomats said. Ghani called on the hardline Islamist group to pledge for a complete ceasefire before talks.
The Taliban have not commented on the decision to release the remaining prisoners.
Discussions over the release of the latest bundle of Taliban prisoners had caused outrage among civilians and legal groups, who questioned the morale of the peace process.
It has also proved wrench for the families of more than 100,000 Afghan citizens who were thought to have been murdered or injured in the past decades, more than 10,000 last year alone. The Loya Jirga had urged the government to apologize to the families for their killers, important among many interpretations of Islamic law.
Sunday’s decision has more than five months of vital talks after Washington and the Taliban agreed on the release of Taliban prisoners as a condition for talks with Kabul.
U.S. officials had in recent days urged the Loya Jirga to support the release of the prisoners despite the disadvantage, in order to get the peace process moving.
Neighboring Pakistan, seen as key to helping pave the way for talks, welcomed Sunday’s decision.
“We hope that with the implementation of this step regarding the release of the detainees, as stipulated in the US-Taliban peace agreement, the intra-Afghan negotiations will begin at an early stage,” the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan said in a statement. .
Human Rights Watch warned that many of the detainees were being held under “too broad terrorism laws that provide indefinite preventive detention”.
With elections in November, Trump, back in the polls, is envious of a promise of a major campaign to end America’s longest war.
The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would be reduced to “less than 5,000” by the end of November, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in an interview aired on Saturday, from current levels of about 8,600.
