Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he will not release 5,000 Taliban prisoners as part of the peace deal between the United States and the Islamic militants.
Ghani, who was recently declared the winner of the presidential election after months of delay, said on Sunday that “it is not in the authority of the United States to decide” on the prisoner swap. Under the agreement, the U.S. and the Taliban are supposed to work toward releasing political and combat prisoners as a confidence-building measure.
The accord, signed on Saturday by U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, calls for the release of up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1,000 captives from the Afghan government.
“The government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners,” Ghani told reporters in Kabul on Sunday.
Ghani said the Afghan people need to be assured that the agreement, which calls for a full withdrawal of U.S. forces in 14 months, would bring peace and not provide the Taliban a means to create more conflict.
“The people of Afghanistan need to believe that we’ve gone from war to peace, and not that the agreement will be either a Trojan horse or the beginning of a much worse phase of conflict,” Ghani said.
The pact has been met with criticism by some in President Trump’s own party. Former national security adviser John Bolton blasted the move on Twitter and said it was an “unacceptable risk to America’s civilian population.” A group of Republicans in Congress sent a letter to Trump on Thursday warning about the implications of a full-scale withdrawal and the Taliban’s history of “extracting concessions in exchange for false assurances.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who oversaw Saturday’s signing in Qatar, did not directly respond to Ghani’s comments in a Sunday interview on CBS’s Face the Nation.
“No one is under any illusion that this will be straightforward,” Pompeo said. “We’ve built an important base where we can begin to bring American soldiers home, reduce the risk of the loss of life of any American in Afghanistan, and hopefully set the conditions so the Afghan people can build out a peaceful resolution to their, now what for them is a 40-year struggle.”
The Taliban was ousted from power in 2001 after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Since then, Taliban insurgents have killed hundreds of U.S. service members and Afghan forces.
