Afghan officials are reporting that they’ve released the last 100 Taliban prisoners on the list to be released, describing this last group as the “most dangerous” out of some 5,000 Taliban they were to release, which is why they waited until the very end.
The Ghani government had dragged its feet for months on prisoner releases because of the “dangerous prisoners” claims, even though the Taliban says many of these last prisoners were very minor figures. After protracted concerns, they were ultimately all released.
This last batch is meant to be the end of the prisoner exchange process, which was to come before the intra-Afghan talks. The talks are expected very soon, though a specific date has not been publicly announced.
This could be a problem, however, as the talks are meant to work out power-sharing, and President Ghani has dismissed the idea. Ghani isn’t specifically in charge of the talks, of course, that’s Abdullah Abdullah’s department, but the president could well throw cold water on the process.
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