Taliban offers cease-fire for prisoner release

THE TALIBAN yesterday proposed a three-month cease-fire in exchange for the release of 7,000 prisoners as well as the removal the group’s leaders from the United Nations blacklist as it continues a sweeping offensive across the country.

A member of the Afghan government negotiation team, Nader Nadery described the request as a “big demand.”

The announcement came as Pakistan guards used tear gas Thursday to disperse hundreds of people who tried to breach a border crossing into Afghanistan, officials said. The frontier was closed a day earlier by Pakistan after the Taliban seized the Afghan side in Spin Boldak district, continuing sweeping gains made by the militants since foreign forces stepped up their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“An unruly mob of about 400 people tried to cross the gate forcefully. They threw stones, which forced us to use tear gas,” said a security official at the southwest Chaman border on the Pakistan side, who asked not to be named. He said around 1,500 people had gathered at the border, waiting to cross since Wednesday.

“We had to baton charge because people were getting unruly,” said a second border official, who also did not want to be named. Jumadad Khan, a senior government official in Chaman, said the situation was now “under control.”

An Afghan Taliban source told Agency France-Presse (AFP) that hundreds of people had also gathered on the Afghan side, hoping to get into Pakistan.

The crossing provides direct access to Pakistan’s Balochistan province – where the Taliban’s top leadership has been based for decades – along with an unknown number of reserve fighters who regularly enter Afghanistan to help bolster their ranks.

A major highway leading from the border connects to Pakistan’s commercial capital Karachi and its sprawling port on the Arabian Sea, which is considered a linchpin for Afghanistan’s billion-dollar heroin trade that has provided a crucial source of revenue for the Taliban’s war chest over the years. According to Reuters, Afghan security forces have retaken control of border crossing with Pakistan, a senior Afghan government official said yesterday, but the Taliban dismissed that saying they still held the town. Afghanistan 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, told Reuters.