Vol. 8 Issue 7 - Public International Law & Policy Group

Roadside bombs are a key Taliban weapon against government and international forces in an
insurgency that has gained pace since the hardliners were removed from government seven
years ago.
Amnesty for 60 Taliban
Agence France Presse, 2/17/09
The Afghan government announced Tuesday it had given amnesty to nearly 60 Taliban
fighters who had agreed to lay down their weapons, as some of them claimed they were
misled into jihad or "holy war".
The men who received amnesty from the government's Commission for Peace and
Reconciliation were the latest of nearly 7,680 over the past three years to agree to not fight
the government, a commission official said.
It comes after President Hamid Karzai again called last week at a security conference in
Germany for Taliban who are not part of Al-Qaeda to give up the insurgency against his
government, backed by thousands of foreign soldiers.
Most of the men in the latest group covered their faces with large Afghan shawls at a
ceremony at which they handed certificates of amnesty in return for pledges to not fight.
The head of the commission, former Afghan president Sebghatullah Mujaddedi, urged them
to stand by their commitment and not return to the militants, adding that the fighting was
hurting mainly civilians.
"It is the civilians who die every day here in suicide attacks or by government or foreign
forces' bombing," he told the ceremony.
Among the 7,680 who had accepted amnesty were 781 men who had been freed from
detention at US military "war on terror" camps at Bagram in Afghanistan and Guantanamo
Bay in Cuba, said commission official Mohammad Akram Mirhazar.
One of the men at Tuesday's ceremony said he had been a Taliban for four years after being
told by religious circles in Pakistan, where he had lived, that he should fight jihad in
Afghanistan because of the presence of foreign troops.
Qari Shair Wali also alleged that Pakistan's intelligence service was funding militant training
centers in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.
Afghans regularly make such allegations against the Inter-Services Intelligence bureau but
they are rejected by the Pakistan government.
Another man, Abdul Ghafar, also said he was misled by religious circles into calling for
jihad.