Free Republic

The US has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantánamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents' agreement to open a political office for peace negotiations in Qatar, the Guardian has learned. According to sources familiar with the talks in the US and in Afghanistan, the handful of Taliban figures will include Mullah Khair Khowa, a former interior minister, and Noorullah Noori, a former governor in northern Afghanistan. More controversially, the Taliban are demanding the release of the former army commander Mullah Fazl Akhund. Washington is reported to be considering formally handing him over to the custody...

A SENIOR Taliban insurgent commander has been killed in an operation led by Afghan National Security Forces and supported by Australian special forces troops. Chief of Joint Operations Lieutenant General Mark Evans said with the phase of that operation now complete it could be revealed that Mullah Amanullah Akhund was killed after insurgents opened fire on a combined Australian and Afghan patrol. He said patrol members returned fire, killing Akhund and two others. Lieutenant General Evans said Akhund was known to have made and placed road-side bombs in Oruzgan province, in southern Afghanistan.

A Swiss newspaper claimed on Sunday that the Taliban's former Defense Minister was free two days after his reported capture by Pakistani security forces. The Swiss weekly Sonntagsblick said one of its reporters spoke to Mullah Obaidullah Akhund on February 28 unhindered in an Islamic School in the southwestern city of Quetta. Akhund, considered a key ally of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was the most senior leader from the hard-line militia to be reported arrested since US-led troops ousted it from power in 2001. Several Pakistani intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said earlier this month that he...