Taliban get shelter for giving up arms
An Afghan strongman is giving sanctuary to Taliban fighters and their kin who had sought haven across the border in Pakistan, building on a radical strategy to reduce Islamabad’s influence on the insurgency.
Kandahar’s powerful police chief Abdul Raziq last December called for a “safe zone” for Taliban militants, a contentious plan centred on Afghanistan’s accusation that the insurgency is fuelled by Pakistan’s support in cross-border sanctuaries.
Since then, around two dozen insurgents have sought sanctuary in the southern province — from senior commanders to low-level fighters — with Mr Raziq’s trusted aide, Sultan Mohammed, instrumental in getting them to leave Pakistan, security sources say.
Some of them spoke to AFP by telephone from secret locations in Kandahar. All say they have been granted de facto amnesty, and some given housing and cash in exchange for not returning to the battlefield.
“Sultan Mohammed told me, ‘Come back to your country, your homeland without fear. I guarantee no one will touch you’,” 37-year-old Mullah Abdul Rauf, a former member of the Taliban’s economic commission, said.
“He came to the border in his car to receive my family,” said Rauf, who defected earlier this year from Quetta in southwest Pakistan with his three wives and children.
Mohammed likens his effort to poking “small holes in a large dam”.
Other Taliban figures who the sources claim sought refuge in Kandahar include senior commanders Malim Paida, Mohammadullah Khan and an insurgent leader known as Doctor Khalil — a longtime fugitive who escaped in a mass jailbreak in Afghanistan’s second largest city in 2011.
Kandahar’s powerful police chief Abdul Raziq last December called for a “safe zone” for Taliban militants
Since then, around two dozen militants have sought shelter with Mr Raziq’s aide, Sultan Mohammed
Mohammed has been instrumental in getting them to leave Pakistan