Afghan govt to swap three jailed Taliban leaders for American, Australian captives

KABUL: Afghanistan will release two senior Taliban commanders and a leader of the Haqqani militant group in exchange for an American and an Australian professor who were kidnapped in 2016, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Tuesday.

According to a British wire service report, the government’s decision to free Anas Haqqani and two other Taliban commanders in a prisoner swap was taken in the hope of securing direct talks with the Taliban, which has hitherto refused to engage with what it calls an illegitimate “puppet” regime in Kabul.

“In order to pave the way for a face-to-face negotiations with the Taliban, the government has decided to free Taliban prisoners in exchange for two university professors,” Ghani said in a televised speech.

"We have decided to conditionally release three Taliban prisoners who... have been in Bagram prison in the custody of the Afghan government for some time," Ghani said according to AFP. Ghani said Anas Haqqani and Taliban commanders Haji Mali Khan and Hafiz Rashid were being released. All three were captured in 2014.

The prisoner exchange comes at a timewhen efforts were being made to revamp peace talks between the United States and the Taliban. The Haqqani network has in recent years carried large-scale militant attack on civilians.

Anas Haqqani is the younger brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is second-in-command in the Afghan Taliban hierarchy and leads the Haqqani network, considered to the deadliest faction of the Afghan Taliban.

Ghani, flanked by his top security advisors, said the decision to release the three Taliban prisoners had been "very hard and necessary". His announcement came one day after Pakistan´s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed met with Afghanistan’s national security adviser Hamdullah Mohib in Kabul.

"They talked about improving the relation between the two countries," Afghanistan´s national security council spokesman Kabir Haqmal said. A Taliban spokesman earlier this year said that the movement was determined to obtain Anas Haqqani’s release and named him as a member of a negotiating team that would hold talks with US officials.

The Taliban had kidnapped US citizen Kevin King and an Australian Timothy Weeks, both professors, in August 2016 from the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. Ghani said authorities had been unable to discover where the Taliban were holding the two captive.

“Information suggests that their health while being held by the terrorists has deteriorated,” he said. Prime Minister Imran Khan during a three-day visit to Washington in July that he would do his best to help release the American University professors.

According to Afghan officials, the next round of talks between the Taliban and Afghan representatives is slated for this month in Beijing. The two, American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks, later appeared looking haggard in a Taliban hostage video, with the insurgents going on to say that King was in poor health.

A Taliban source in Pakistan told AFP on Tuesday that King had been "seriously ill", and the insurgents were worried he could die in their custody. The elite American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) opened in 2006 and has attracted a number of faculty members from Western countries.

In a statement, AUAF said it was "encouraged" to hear news of the possible release of the two professors. "While AUAF is not part of these discussions, we continue to urge the immediate and safe return of our faculty members who have been held in captivity, away from their friends and families, for more than three years," the statement read. The US and the Australian embassies in Kabul declined to provide immediate comment.