KABUL, Afghanistan — Senior Taliban officials were among at least a dozen prisoners released by Pakistan over the last two days, with additional releases expected soon, former Taliban and Afghan officials said on Saturday.
The releases are expected to help bolster the efforts of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council to start talks with the insurgents. Previously the council had been rejected as insignificant by the Taliban and dismissed as impotent by Western diplomats.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by telephone, said the insurgents welcomed the prisoner release, but he declined to comment when asked if it might further talks with the council.
The head of the council, Salahuddin Rabbani, said Saturday that additional releases were expected as “part of a process.” Mr. Rabbani took over the council after the assassination of his father, Burhanuddin, by a Taliban emissary with a suicide bomb hidden in his turban.
On Thursday, the council traveled to Pakistan — long considered a haven for Afghan Taliban leaders and fighters — in an effort to restart the moribund peace process.
The names of 11 out of the 12 being released from Pakistani prisons were provided by Mohammad Akbar Agha, a former Taliban military commander in Wardak Province who is among a small group of reconciled Taliban figures who now live in Kabul.
The list includes Mualavi Jahangirwal, a secretary to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar; Mualavi Turabi, the former justice minister for the Taliban; Saad Udin Agha, an aide to Mullah Omar; Matiullah, who was in charge of logistics in the Taliban defense ministry; and Noor ul Haq Mujahid, the son of a famous Taliban military commander, Yunis Khalis, who also fought against the Soviets in the 1980s and was invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan.
“Some of them are junior people who I don’t know very well, but some are important figures such as Mullah Turabi,” the Taliban spokesman, Mr. Mujahid said.
Mr. Rabbani would not confirm the names, saying only that they included “Afghan citizens who expressed their willingness to work for peace.”
The prisoners, he said, were being given their freedom either in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but that most were expected to remain in Pakistan where they have families living in exile. Nine men have been released so far, Mr. Rabbani said Saturday at a news conference.
Mr. Agha said Saturday that among the prisoners still being held were Mualavi Abdul Ghani Baradur, the Taliban’s former military commander, whose arrest by the Pakistanis was seen as the reason for a breakdown in an earlier attempt at peace talks, and Anwar ul Haq, the military commander for Jalalabad and head of Taliban operations in Tora Bora, which was the last hiding place of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Mr. Rabbani would not say whether Mr. Baradur was scheduled to be released, but he did say that he expected additional prisoners to be freed. Pakistani officials have said Mr. Baradur’s name was not on the list of those to be released.
The releases do not include prisoners held by the Americans, either at the Bagram base in Afghanistan, or in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba Such releases have been central to Taliban demands in the past. The Taliban have consistently insisted they would only enter peace talks with the Americans because they viewed Afghan officials as puppets of foreign forces.
An American initiative brokered in Qatar, which would have involved prisoner releases from Guantánamo as a first step, collapsed last March when the Taliban publicly pulled out of it saying the Americans had reneged on their promises.
Of the 11 names given by Mr. Agha, the other 4 were Abdul Sallam, Mualavi Allah Dad and two men identified only as Mohammad and Qutbuddin. Many Afghans go by only one name. Mr. Agha said he did not know who those four were, indicating they were probably minor figures. He also said he did not know the name of the 12th person expected to be freed on Saturday.
“Release of Taliban officials from prison is a good step in building an environment of trust between the Afghan government and the Taliban but I don’t think their release will help the peace talks, just create some trust between the two sides,” Mr. Agha said.
Taliban Leaders Among Prisoners Freed in Pakistan
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق