On Sunday The Taliban has released the first prisoners in a delayed exchange deal with the Afghan government.
The spokesperson of Taliban Suhail Shaheen tweeted that,” On Sunday 20 prisoners of the Kabul administrations will be released, the group of 20 prisoners will be handed to a representative of the Red Cross in the southern city of Kandhar.
The Afghan government came ahead with releasing a hundred prisoners of the Taliban over the past week. The Afghan government has pressed ahead with freeing hundreds of Taliban prisoners over the past week while the opposition group was against this decision. On Wednesday The Afghan government released 100 Taliban prisoners as a first step in a peaceful manner.
Washington underwrites a deal with the Taliban in February that decided to the withdrawal of US and foreign troops from Afghanistan by next summer, and also provided the militants to start a conversation with Kabul.
The deal includes that the Afghan government will free 5000 Taliban prisoners and Taliban prisoners will release 1,000 pro-government prisoners in return. The exchange was supposed to do by 10 March.
Kabul has claimed that the Taliban want 15 of their top commanders to be free. A small Taliban team met with the government to discuss a comprehensive prisoner swap last week but walked out of the talks soon after officials offered a gradual release of the prisoners.
In Afghanistan, the Head of US and NATO forces met with opposition leaders for the discussions of non-violence in the war-weary country After that Sunday’s announcement came.
The Taliban warned Afghan that their decision to release a group of prisoners didn’t show that the conversation with Kabul was started.
Opposition spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told to AFP that”No the process is not back on, but this is a goodwill step by the to accelerate the prisoners exchange process”.
