China News Service, August 10th. According to Reuters, the Afghan government agreed on the 9th local time to release 400 Taliban detainees in dispute, aiming to pave the way for peace negotiations.
According to reports, the Taliban had previously requested the release of 400 detainees as a condition for participating in peace negotiations. This was the last group of 5,000 prisoners to be released.
In order to remove obstacles, allow the peace process to begin and end the bloody conflict, the resolution at the Great Loya Jirga meeting composed of Afghan representatives approved the release of 400 Taliban personnel. Afghan President Ghani subsequently announced that he would sign an order for the release of the 400 detainees.
The Taliban welcomed this and stated that they are ready to start negotiations within 10 days of being released.
According to previous reports, the exchange of detainees between the Afghan government and the Taliban is part of the peace agreement reached at the end of February 2020. According to the agreement, the Afghan government ordered the release of 5,000 Taliban detainees, and the Taliban pledged to release 1,000 detained government personnel.
At the beginning of March, Ghani ordered the release of 5,000 Taliban detainees in order to clear obstacles for internal dialogue between the Afghans. However, the process of exchanging detainees between the two parties was interrupted many times.
On July 7, the Afghan government announced the suspension of the release of the last group of 600 Taliban detainees, saying that they were not only members of the Taliban, but also committed serious crimes. The Taliban insisted that the release of all detainees is what must be done to initiate internal dialogue between the Afghans. The Afghan government later released about 200 of them.