Afghanistan’s President Ghani announced an intention to speed up prisoner releases on Monday, and seems to be making good on that. The government confirmed Tuesday that 900 more prisoners will be released today, up from 100 the day before.
This comes on the third day of an Eid al-Fitr holiday ceasefire, which is continuing to hold. There was talk of a ceasefire extension already, and a sped up prisoner release process is likely to be a substantial boost to that idea.
Ghani was far behind on releasing prisoners from the US-Taliban peace deal. Since this was a major obstacle for the Taliban coming to intra-Afghan talks, this new releases are a big chance to advance forward on making deals.
Afghan officials had suggested 2,000 prisoners could be released in the next few weeks, but with this step up in the release process, one can only assume that the process will be done sooner.
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