The announcement followed last month's trip by Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
to Pakistain, where he sought the handover of some Afghan bully boyz as part of the stalled grinding of the peace processor.
Karzai as well as the United States want Pakistain to hand the bully boyz directly to the Afghan authorities, but on Saturday, a group of seven Taliban was simply allowed to walk out of their cells into Pakistain.
"In order to further facilitate the Afghan reconciliation process, Pakistain is releasing seven Taliban detainees," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
A foreign ministry front man separately said all seven, including a senior commander called Mansoor Dadullah, were freed on Saturday. The other prisoners are Said Wali, Abdul Manan, Karim Agha, Sher Afzal, Gul Muhammad and Muhammad Zai.
Asked if they had been handed over to the Afghan authorities or were just released in Pakistain, the front man said: "Just released."
Pakistain is said to have backed the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and is seen as a crucial gatekeeper in attempts by the US and Afghan governments to contact myrmidon leaders who fled to Pakistain after the group's 2001 removal.
But Afghanistan has long accused Pakistain of playing a double game in its 12-year-old war against Taliban fighters. It says Pakistain, facing a Taliban insurgency of its own, makes pronouncements about peace, but allows elements of its military to play a spoiling role.
Release of a senior commander
Dadullah, who is among the seven released prisoners, is a senior Death Eater commander who was captured by Pak security forces in February 2008 in the southwestern Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
province with at least five other Death Eaters.
Dadullah had been in charge of operations against NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
and US-led troops in the southern Afghan province of Helmand
...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan...
Dadullah had succeeded his elder brother -- the Taliban's overall military commander Mullah Dadullah -- who was killed in a joint Afghan-NATO operation in southern Afghanistan in May 2007.
The Taliban said in late December that they had sacked Mansoor Dadullah because he disobeyed orders. But a front man for the commander denied that he was fired, leading to speculation about infighting among the Death Eaters.
Dadullah was one of five Taliban who were freed in May 2007 in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo.