Taliban halt talks on U.S. soldier

Insurgents overrun base, kill 21 Afghan soldiers in bunks

Afghan soldiers man a checkpoint after Taliban attack in the Ghazi Abad district of Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, Feb.23, 2014. Hundreds of heavily armed Taliban insurgents attacked thecheckpoint on Sunday, officials said, killing 21 soldiers in the deadliest single incident for the Afghan army in at least a year.(AP photo/Roohullah Anwari)

Afghan soldiers man a checkpoint after Taliban attack in the Ghazi Abad district of Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, Feb.23, 2014. Hundreds of heavily armed Taliban insurgents attacked thecheckpoint on Sunday, officials said, killing 21 soldiers in the deadliest single incident for the Afghan army in at least a year.(AP photo/Roohullah Anwari)

Monday, February 24, 2014

ISLAMABAD - Afghanistan’s Taliban said Sunday they had suspended “mediation” with the United States to exchange captive Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five senior Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, halting - at least temporarily - what was considered the best chance yet of securing the 27-year-old soldier’s freedom since his capture in 2009.

In a terse Pashto language statement emailed to The Associated Press, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid blamed the “current complex political situation in the country” for the suspension.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the talks said the cause of the suspension was not the result of any issue between the United States and the Taliban. He declined to elaborate and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, was last seen in a video released in December, footage seen as “proof of life” demanded by the U.S. Bergdahl is thought to be held in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mujahid said the indirect talks with the U.S. had been mediated by Qatar, where the Taliban established a political office last June. The video of Bergdahl was part of the negotiations that were to leadto the eventual transfer of the five Taliban leaders held since 2002 in Guantanamo Bay.

“The leadership of the Islamic Emirate has decided to suspend the process for some time due to the current complex political situation in the country,” the statement read. “The process will remain suspended without the exchange of the prisoners until our decision to resume.”

Mujahid did not elaborate on what “political situation” in Afghanistan led to the suspension of talks or say when they might resume. Afghanistan is in the middle of a presidential campaign ahead of an April 5 election. Two-term President Hamid Karzai cannot run again for office under the Afghan Constitution.

The U.S. State Department has refused to acknowledge the negotiations, but the U.S. official previously told the AP that indirect talks were underway.

In response to the Taliban statement Sunday, U.S. Embassy spokesman in Afghanistan Robert Hilton said: “Sgt. Bergdahl has been gone far too long, however we can’t discuss the efforts we’re taking to obtain his return.”

Col. Tim Marsano, spokesman for the Idaho National Guard, said he spoke Sunday with Bergdahl’s family and said they declined to comment further.

“The family has no more words,” Marsano said.

Efforts at a swap are also seen as a concession to Karzai. Washington would like to see him back away from his refusal to sign a security pact that is necessary for the U.S. to leave a residual force behind in Afghanistan. Karzai says he wants Washington to push reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban forward, without offering specifics.

The five Taliban detainees at the heart of the proposal are the most senior Afghans still held at the prison at the U.S. base in Cuba. Each has been held since 2002.

They are:

Mohammad Fazl, who Human Rights Watch says could be prosecuted for war crimes for purportedly presiding over the mass killing of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001 as the Taliban sought to consolidate their control over the country.

Abdul Haq Wasiq, who served as the Taliban deputy minister of intelligence and was in direct contact with supreme leader Mullah Omar as well as other senior Taliban figures, according to military documents. Under Wasiq, there were widespread accounts of killings, torture and mistreatment.

Mullah Norullah Nori, who was a senior Taliban commander in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif when the Taliban fought U.S. forces in late 2001. He previously served as a Taliban governor in two northern provinces, where he has been accused of ordering the massacre of thousands of Shiites.

Khairullah Khairkhwa, who served in various Taliban positions including interior minister and as a military commander and had direct ties to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, according to U.S. military documents. His U.S. lawyers have argued that his affiliation with the Taliban was a matter of circumstance, rather than ideology, and that he had backed away from them by the time of his capture. His lawyers also have argued that he was merely a civil servant and had no military role, though a judge said there was enough evidence to justify holding him at Guantanamo. His lawyers have appealed.

Mohammed Nabi, who served as chief of security for the Taliban in Qalat, Afghanistan, and later worked as a radio operator for the Taliban’s communications office in Kabul and as an office manager in the Border Department, according to U.S. military documents. In the spring of 2002, he told interrogators that he received about $500 from a CIA operative as part of the unsuccessful effort to track down Mullah Omar. When that didn’t pan out, he says he ended up helping the agency locate al-Qaida members.

Meanwhile, Taliban insurgents overran an Afghan National Army base near Asadabad on Sunday morning, killing 21 soldiers in their bunks in what appeared to be the worst single blow to government forces since 2010, according to both government and insurgent officials.

The governor of Kunar province, Shuja al-Mulk Jalala, said it appeared that infiltrators had let the Taliban insurgents into the base about 4 a.m., and that most of those who died had been killed in their sleep. Jalala put the death toll at 20, with eight other soldiers reported to have been taken prisoner by the insurgents.

A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, Gen. Zaher Azimi, later posted on Twitter to update the estimate to 21 dead and three wounded, along with others missing.

Initially, Taliban officials, reached by telephone, denied that they had infiltrators in the base.

The strike in Kunar came “amid preparations by security forces for launching an attack to clear the Taliban threat from the area,” said Col. Bahwul Khan, a police officer in the province.

Karzai ordered an investigation and canceled a planned state visit to Sri Lanka in response to the attack, in the Ghaziabad district of Kunar province, near the eastern border with Pakistan.

In a statement condemning the raid, Karzai’s palace asked Pakistan’s leadership to “realistically and seriously” cooperate with Afghanistan in the fight against militancy.

Azimi said “hundreds” of foreign and Afghan insurgents crossed the border to mount the attack.

The Taliban later claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack in an emailed statement, saying that one of their insurgents was killed and two were wounded.

The attack turned into an intense, four-hour gunbattle between the army and insurgents.

An army support unit en route to assist the operation also was targeted by a suicide bomber, he said, but there were no military casualties.

Gen. Abdul Habib Sayedkhaili - chief of police for Kunar province - said that there were about 30 Afghan soldiers manning the outpost when insurgents attacked from three sides with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and light weapons.

He said that of seven soldiers initially reported missing, three had been found alive and security forces continued to searching for the others.

It was not immediately clear if the soldiers had been kidnapped or had fled during the assault.

As of Sunday afternoon, Afghan forces had retaken the outpost.

The Taliban have escalated attacks in recent months as they try to take advantage of the withdrawal of foreign troops at the end of 2014.

Information for this article was contributed by Kathy Gannon, Cassandra Vinograd, Keith Ridlerand Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press; by Sayed Salahuddin and Kevin Sieff of The Washington Post; and by Niamatullah Karyab, Rod Nordland, Jawad Sukhanyar and Haris Kakar of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/24/2014