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Taliban Demands Prisoner Release To Rejoin Peace Talks — Official Recognition Of Political Office Will End 15-Year-Old War?

By Alap Naik Desai
Published on: 05:40 PST, Jan 25, 2016

The Taliban has demanded the release of political prisoners as one of the primary conditions to rejoin peace talks. Official recognition of its political office could re-initiate the process that might end the 15-year-old war between the official government and Taliban Islamists.

The Taliban, Afghanistan’s foremost active rebel force, has made its demands quite clear. If the current government intends to carry forward with the peace talks, which have been derailed on several occasions in the past, they must oblige with all the demands made by the group. For peace talks to begin during meetings with people close to the Afghan government on Sunday, Taliban insisted that political prisoners that have been captured and are being held in multiple prisons across the region, be released immediately.

The Islamic radicals have insisted that the unnamed list of prisoners should be immediately removed from a U.N. blacklist, which has resulted in freezing of their assets and imposition of a strict travel ban on key Taliban leaders, severely limiting their movement out of the country. Additionally, the rebel forces have demanded official recognition of their political office, a step that the regional government has been staunchly refusing.

These are “among the preliminary steps needed for peace,” the Taliban said in a statement. “Without them, progress towards peace is not feasible,” reported the International News. Incidentally, the demand for the release of political prisoners isn’t new, experts point out. Taliban has consistently put forth the same demand during every preliminary talks, and the regional government had remained adamant, thereby stalling the peace talks without any progress.

Experts lament that since this time, too, Taliban hasn’t budged on their demands, the results could be fairly consistent. In fact, experts indicate Taliban may not be interested in having a meaningful discussion at all, and is using the demands for the release of political prisoners merely as an excuse not to join the talks.

The Taliban has a political office in Qatar that has remained shut. The inauguration of the office was considered to be a historic event by the Islamic rebel group. However, the office that opened in 2013 was shut down merely days after the inauguration, after Afghanistan’s official government registered a strong protest.

Incidentally, the Taliban sees presence of any foreign office or military in Afghanistan as a threat to the region, as was clearly evident from the statements made by Mohammad Naim Wardak, a member of the Taliban delegation, who was speaking on the sidelines of the event.

“As long as foreign forces are in Afghanistan, peace and stability is impossible. We will take every path which leads to the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and to the establishment of an Islamic system.”

Though Taliban’s demands may appear to be detrimental to the peace process, it is for the first time, the group’s political commission, which is based in the Qatari capital and has a mandate to lead peace efforts, have publicly discussed reconciliation initiatives since President Barack Obama dropped plans in October to withdraw almost all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, reported the Wall Street Journal.

There had been a marked rise in insurgency activities by the Taliban, ever since there were talks of a complete withdrawal of America’s military presence in Afghanistan. In fact, the rebels managed to snatch away the province of Helmand from government control. There were a lot of suicide bombings, which have destroyed what little peace there was in the region. Not just Afghanistan, but its neighboring countries as well, have been keen to get troubled negotiations back on track, reported Reuters.

Since the 2001 invasion by America, the Taliban has been persistently conducting clandestine acts of terror to destabilize the government. Now that the U.S. has clarified that 5,500 troops will continue to occupy the region till Barack Obama is no longer in office, the radical Islamist group may be looking to have a peaceful solution to the 15-year-old war, reported First Post.

[Photo by Banaras Khan/Getty Images]

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