Taliban Rejects Afghan Govt’s Phased Release of Prisoners

Afghanistan’s Taliban rejected Wednesday the proposal from President Ashraf Ghani to release prisoners in phases arguing that the "conditional release" of the Taliban prisoners is against the accord signed with the United States.

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"We reject Ghani's phase release of prisoners," Suhail Shaheen, the spokesman for Taliban, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, adding that they “will also make sure at the time of the prisoners release that they are releasing the list of prisoners we have provided them with.”

“Once this is done, we will proceed with the intra-Afghan talks,” Shaheen concluded.

This comes as the recently sworn-in president issued a decree ordering the release of 1,500 Taliban insurgents, which presidential spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said was the first of two phases of releasing 5,000 Taliban prisoners in order to secure the commencement of intra-Afghan negotiations. 

The other 3,500 are to be freed after negotiations begin, on the condition that there is a tangible reduction in violence, according to the four-article pardon decree.

Last week, Ghani rejected the demand as a condition for talks, but five official sources said the president now agreed in order to secure the U.S. and other international endorsements for his inauguration as head of state.

“This is the ‘price’ that Ghani had to pay in return for Khalilzad attending his inauguration,” a former senior Afghan official told Reuters.

Meanwhile, as part of the deal, U.S. forces and NATO troops will begin to withdraw from Afghanistan to end more than 18 years of war.

On Monday, a spokesman for the U.S. forces in Afghanistan Sonny Leggett said U.S. forces had begun its conditions-based reduction of forces to 8,600 over 135 days.