Gov’t-Taliban prisoner release talks end inconclusive, TB team leaves Kabul

A member of the government’s negotiating team told Ariana News that the Afghan government didn’t come to an agreement with the Taliban over the prisoner release, adding that the disagreement was on the Taliban’s demand – to release 15 prominent commanders – but was denied by the government.

This comes as the Taliban’s political office in Qatar said that the prisoner release was postponed for various reasons.

A week ago, a team of three Taliban representatives came to Kabul to negotiate with the Afghan government over the release of the prisoners.

Although both the laterals had several talks and agreements on releasing the prisoners, eventually, the government and the Taliban didn’t come to an agreement to any releases and the team left Kabul unfruitfully.

Now the Taliban doesn’t seem happy about it, as according to the US-Taliban agreement, 5,000 prisoners of the Taliban were supposed to be released unconditionally.

Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s political Spokesperson, said, “Their release has been delayed under one pretext or another till now. Therefore, our technical team will not participate in fruitless meetings with relevant sides starting from tomorrow.”

Yet again, the usual question niggles: Why this deadlock?

The Taliban had expected that in the very first phase at least 15 of their prominent commanders would be released. The Afghan government though, pronounced “NO” to the demand.

The government has said that 400 aged prisoners of the Taliban could be released first and that it couldn’t accept every demand of the Taliban.

To start the Intra-Afghan Talks depends on the prisoner release and as of this date, the political impasse, among other tensions, has put the country in a difficult position.

The US, however, insists on the prisoner releases – implementation of an important part of the US-Taliban deal – and remove the hurdles lying on the way of the Intra-Afghan Talks.