The ongoing prisoner release issue in Afghanistan remains unresolved, with the government now down to 597 people from the initial list of 5,000, and the government refusing to release any of them to the Taliban.
That’s a problem, because the Taliban has conditioned intra-Afghan talks on the releases happening. The Taliban has warned that the list doesn’t make sense, with some of the 597 only charged with being members of the Taliban and not for doing anything.
The Afghan government isn’t yet being clear what the hold-up was, but seemed to indicate “moral” problems. The government has previously rejected releasing murderers or other Taliban involved in certain serious crimes.
The government had held off on releases several times trying to get peace talks started without the releases, but eventually released most of them. The Taliban likely will hold out for more of these releases, and having gotten almost 90%, they’ll likely want the rest.
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