SOME TALIBAN PRISONERS RELEASED BY PAKISTAN ARE BACK IN BATTLE, OFFICIALS FEAR

[With its long-standing links to Afghan Taliban insurgents, Pakistan has a vital role in nudging them to the table as the United States winds down its involvement in the 11-year war in Afghanistan. But Pakistan’s handling of the prisoner release once again subverted the trust of the Afghans, who were supposed to receive the captives and keep tabs on them to lower the risk of any returning to terrorist havens in Pakistan.]

By Richard Leiby and Kevin Sieff

Life and war in Afghanistan: February 2013: Photographers document
everyday life in Afghanistan as coalition forces prepare for
their 2014 departure.

KABUL — Pakistan’s release late last year of several imprisoned Taliban officials and fighters, which it advertised as a good-faith effort to help bring peace to Afghanistan, is now prompting questions about whether the gesture has yielded anything but potential new dangers for NATO and Afghan troops.

American, Afghan and Pakistani officials say they believe some of the freed Islamist movement members have rejoined their colleagues waging war against Western troops and the coalition-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

With its long-standing links to Afghan Taliban insurgents, Pakistan has a vital role in nudging them to the table as the United States winds down its involvement in the 11-year war in Afghanistan. But Pakistan’s handling of the prisoner release once again subverted the trust of the Afghans, who were supposed to receive the captives and keep tabs on them to lower the risk of any returning to terrorist havens in Pakistan.

The whereabouts and even the number of ex-prisoners have remained murky since their release in two batches in mid-November and late December by Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the ­Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, as part of a road map drawn up by the Afghan High Peace Council to build the militants’ confidence.

Despite an earlier agreement, the ISI failed to consult with the council when it set many of the captives free. On Friday, however, the Pakistani government pledged to coordinate future Taliban releases with the council, in a belated admission that it had blindsided the Afghans.

The U.S. military is keenly interested in the former captives’ whereabouts and is trying to track down any who have returned to the Taliban in Afghanistan — and wants to identify those participating in the reconciliation process so they won’t be targeted.

‘Back to their old ways’

“It’s all a black hole,” one U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

A Pakistani security official confirmed that 18 men were freed and described them as junior to mid-level members of the Islamic movement, including field commanders and foot soldiers.

“Some have gone back to their old ways, with their old friends,” said the official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The original deal, presented in Islamabad by peace council head Salahuddin Rabbani and backed by Washington, envisioned the prisoners being handed over to Afghanistan or a third country. Instead, most of the released Taliban members rejoined their families in Pakistan, in cities including Quetta, Peshawar and Karachi, to recover from years in detention, according to residents and a Taliban spokesman.

The most senior of the captives, Noruddin Toorabi, the ailing former justice minister in the Taliban government, has promoted himself as a spokesman for the collective prisoners. But, like others set free, he will have to be anointed by Taliban chief Mohammad Omar to be allowed a role in any prospective peace talks.

The ISI spurned a specific request by Rabbani to free the most important prisoner: Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader under Omar taken captive in 2010.

Afghan officials considered Baradar’s release a crucial olive branch to Omar to nudge along a mediated end to the war — but, said the Pakistani security official, “Baradar isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

Rabbani, in an interview, acknowledged that questions remain about the ability of any Taliban representatives to negotiate on behalf of a group that he says is splintered. But he said he remains an optimist.

“You can’t convince everyone in the opposition to join the peace process,” he said, “but if you can convince a large majority, the level of violence will come down.”

Part of the Afghan government’s goal in giving Pakistan a key role in brokering any deal was to allay enmities between the ever-suspicious neighbors. The idea was to cement their common interest in averting a civil war in Afghanistan after the United States pulls out its combat troops at the end of 2014.

It hasn’t worked out exactly that way, given the friction over the prisoner releases including the fact that the peace council got only two of the four specific prisoners it asked for.

The motives of the ISI in releasing hand-picked captives remains unclear, and probably deliberately so, analysts said: Was it to help the peace process, as claimed, or to keep its Taliban proxies on the field to assure Pakistan’s influence in any future Afghan government?

Unclear effect

“This is not for Afghanistan, it’s for Pakistan’s game,” said Wahid Mujda, a former Taliban government official who closely monitors peace overtures.

Mujda said he doubted the releases would have any impact on negotiations because “the important people are still in jail,” including Baradar.

Omar, who headed the Taliban regime during its five-year rule, has conditioned negotiations on the release of five Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay and a permanent withdrawal of all foreign troops.

Meanwhile, the Taliban continues to assert that it will never negotiate with Karzai, whom it considers an illegitimate leader and U.S. puppet.

This week, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid scoffed at talks in London held by Karzai, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and British Prime Minister David Cameron aimed at bringing the Taliban to the table. In a statement, Mujahid said previous contacts with “counterfeit and ineffective individuals and circles” had led nowhere — a glancing repudiation of the prisoner releases.

Omar Samad, a former diplomat under Karzai, said the prisoners’ release has not resulted in any progress toward resumption of talks, which are already bogged down by competing interests and rival back-channel negotiations among several countries including the United States, which has angered Karzai by making separate overtures to the Taliban.

“Different agendas are playing out,” Samad said. “And the clock is ticking.”

Sieff reported from Kabul.

@ The Washington Post

WHY URANIUM WOULD MAKE A NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR TEST ESPECIALLY SCARY

[Some analysts fear, though, that an upcoming test could feature a uranium-fueled weapon, rendering it potentially even more provocative. North Korea has in the past used plutonium. Why would the switch to uranium matter? Here are four reasons.]

By Max Fisher 

North Korea’s recent threat to conduct an underground nuclear weapons test, its third, is provocative enough on its own. The North Korean nuclear weapons program is illegal, dangerous and destabilizing, has been widely condemned by the rest of the world and is even causing some tension (alas, probably relatively minor and temporary tension) in Pyongyang’s all-important relationship with China.

Some analysts fear, though, that an upcoming test could feature a uranium-fueled weapon, rendering it potentially even more provocative. North Korea has in the past used plutonium. Why would the switch to uranium matter? Here are four reasons.

1) Uranium enrichment is easier to hide. “It doesn’t need a reactor like plutonium, and can be carried out using centrifuge cascades in relatively small buildings that give off no heat and are hard to detect,” Mark Fitzpatrick, who as director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ non-proliferation program often focuses on North Korea, told an Australian news outlet. The country revealed it had a uranium enrichment facility in 2010 and is suspected of having more. Nuclear analyst Siegfried Hecker wrote in Foreign Policy recently that, based on his observations during a 2010 trip to the North, he has concluded that “Pyongyang must have a covert centrifuge facility” and probably possesses enough highly enriched uranium for a weapons test.

2) Weapons-grade uranium is easier to ship abroad. ”Highly enriched uranium is the preferred currency of rogue states or terrorist groups,” Paul Carroll, who works for the Ploughshares Fund, told the same Australian outlet. ”It’s the easiest fissile material to make a crude bomb out of and the technical know-how and machinery for enriching uranium is more readily transferred and sold.” A North Korean nuclear weapon is bad enough for Northeast Asia, but proliferation is a potentially global problem.

3) Iran might be able to build a bomb without a nuclear test. North Korea could share its experience from the uranium-bomb test with Iran, as it did with missile technology, according to Hecker. This means that if Iran decides it wants to build a uranium-fueled weapon, it might not necessarily need to conduct its own weapons test to do so. That puts Iran potentially one step closer to “break-out” capability and means the world would have one less signal that Tehran had decided to go ahead.

4) North Korea would have two different ways to build a bomb. The first way, using plutonium, is limited by the country’s stockpile, which Hecker estimates is only enough for “four to eight primitive devices.” Plutonium is hard to make in secret because it requires a big plant. Highly enriched uranium, on the other hand, can be produced in greater secrecy and greater quantities, particularly given North Korea’s access to uranium deposits. It would be that much easier for Pyongyang to squirrel away more nuclear weapons if it had two ways to make them.

© The Washington Post