Taleban offer 3-month ceasefire in return for prisoner release
The Taleban have offered a three-month ceasefire in exchange for the release of 7,000 insurgent prisoners, an Afghan government negotiator said on Thursday, as Pakistan confirmed the militant group had control of a key border crossing.
“It is a big demand,” said Nader Nadery, a key member of the government team involved in peace talks with the Taleban, adding the insurgents also demanded the removal of their leaders’ names from a United Nations blacklist.
It was not immediately clear how the government would react to the ceasefire offer, or how new it was, and it comes as the United States accelerates the pace of a troop withdrawal due to be finished by August 31.
A spokesman for the Taleban said he was only aware of the suggestion of a ceasefire over the forthcoming Eid Al Adha holiday.
On Thursday, Pakistan’s foreign ministry confirmed the border crossing was in the hands of the Taleban.
“They have taken control of Spin Boldak border crossing,” said ministry spokesman Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri, a day after the Taleban seized the town.
Meanwhile, a senior Afghan government official said on Thursday that Afghan security forces had retaken control of a major southern border crossing with Pakistan that the Taleban briefly captured, but the Taleban dismissed that saying they still held the town.
Taleban fighters captured the Spin Boldak-chaman border crossing on Wednesday, the second most important crossing on the border with Pakistan and a major source of revenue for the Westernbacked government in Kabul.
But Afghan forces retook the area’s main market, the customs department and other government installations in the border town a few hours later on Wednesday, a senior government official in the southern province of Kandahar, where the crossing is located.
But Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said his forces still held the border post.
“It is merely propaganda and a baseless claim by the Kabul administration,” he said.
Muska Dastageer, a lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan, said the Taleban ceasefire offer was a likely attempt by them to consolidate the positions they have gained so swiftly in recent weeks. —