KABUL – Taliban Not Happy With Kabul Releasing Prisoners. The Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani has release 200 Taliban prisoners. These are low-risk inmates who have promised never to return to the battlefield.
According to details, Ashraf Ghani administration released 100 of these on Wednesday and another 100 on Thursday. Even though Taliban delegation walked out of talks with the Afghan government.
A small Taliban team came to Kabul last week to meet the Ashraf Ghani government. This to discuss a comprehensive prisoner swap of 5,000 Taliban in return for 1,000 Afghan security forces. Meanwhile, along with walking out of prisoner swap talks, the Taliban have dismissed Kabul’s initiative as unacceptable.
The releases come as Ghani faces an ongoing political crisis, US fury over a floundering peace process and a growing coronavirus pandemic in Afghanistan, where officials fear the disease could run riot through the country’s prisons.
Taliban Not Happy With Kabul Releasing Prisoners
The United States signed a withdrawal deal with the Taliban in late February. The deal require the Afghan government, which was not a signatory to the accord, to participate in the prisoner exchange. Meanwhile, that step was supposed to have led to “intra-Afghan” peace talks starting on March 10. In the agreement, the US and other foreign forces will withdraw from Afghanistan in 13 months, and the Taliban must talk to Kabul and stick to several security guarantees.