KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Taliban targeted a pro-government militia compound in northern Afghanistan before dawn Monday, killing 14 members of the Afghan security forces, a local official said. The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the attack.
The attack came even as Taliban officials said just hours earlier that a temporary, nationwide cease-fire had been agreed upon among their council leaders. It wasn't clear when the cease-fire would go into effect.
Of the 14 fatalities in the pre-dawn attack in Jawzjan province, 13 were members of a pro-government militia and one was a policeman, said Abdul Maroof Azer, the governor's spokesman.
Five other militiamen were wounded and two are missing, according to Azer. He said reinforcements later managed to reach the area and that the compound is now firmly back under government control.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military in its daily report of overnight military operations with Afghan forces said that 30 Taliban fighters were killed across the country and several other insurgents detained.
The Taliban have intensified their attacks in northern Afghanistan in recent days. They targeted a local militia compound in northern Takhar province on Sunday, killing at least 17 Afghan militiamen. On Friday, at least 10 Afghan soldiers were killed in an attack on a checkpoint in southern Helmand province.
On Dec. 23, an American soldier was killed in combat in northern Kunduz province. The Taliban claimed they were behind a fatal roadside bombing that targeted American and Afghan forces there. Also last week, a Taliban attack on a checkpoint killed at least seven Afghan army soldiers in northern Balkh province. Another six Afghan troops were killed in the same province Thursday in an attack on an army base.
The Taliban today control or hold sway over half of the country and, along with the Islamic State, stage near-daily attacks targeting Afghan and U.S. forces, and Afghan government officials. Scores of civilians die in the cross-fire.
A cease-fire had been demanded by Washington before any peace agreement could be signed. A peace deal would allow the U.S. to bring home its troops from Afghanistan and end its 18-year military engagement there, America's longest.
The White House said it would have no comment on the cease-fire reports. The Taliban did not specify the duration of the cease-fire, though it was suggested the truce would last for 10 days.
The U.S. wants any peace deal to include a promise from the Taliban that Afghanistan would not be used as a base by terrorist groups. The U.S. currently has an estimated 12,000 troops in Afghanistan.
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FATE OF PRISONERS
Meanwhile, thousands of Taliban prisoners jailed in Afghanistan as insurgents see the peace deal being hammered out as their ticket to freedom.
They know a prisoner release is a key pillar of any peace agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban.
A list of about 5,000 Taliban prisoners has been given to the Americans and their release has been written into the agreement under discussion, said a Taliban official familiar with the on-again, off-again talks taking place in Qatar. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. U.S. and Afghan government officials have said a prisoner release is part of the negotiation.
But some analysts say freeing prisoners could undermine peace in Afghanistan.
"There's a need for Afghan and U.S. officials to do their due diligence on any Taliban prisoners they're planning to release, in order to minimize the likelihood that they'll set free jihadists that can do destabilizing things and undercut a fledgling peace process," warned Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson Center.
The Associated Press interviewed more than a dozen Taliban prisoners inside the Pul-e-Charkhi prison on the eastern edge of the capital, Kabul. Several of them were nostalgic for the Taliban's Afghanistan, ruled by their previous leader, the reclusive Mullah Mohammed Omar, who died several years ago.
But they also insisted that they accept it would not be the same now and that, though they still wanted what they call Islamic rule, they no longer call for some of their strict edicts, like the ban on education and on girls and women working.
"We want women to be educated, become engineers, we want women to work in every department," said one prisoner, Maulvi Niaz Mohammed, though he said the work must be "based on Islam." He said young Afghans should not fear the Taliban, "it is they who will build our country and develop it."
Taliban negotiators have taken a similar tone in the talks. But there is a deep distrust on both sides of the conflict and many in the public worry what will happen if the Taliban, who ruled for five years until they were toppled in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, regain authority.
The Taliban have well-organized communication networks inside Afghan prisons that record the latest arrests, province by province, as well as who is sick and who has died. It all gets delivered to a prisoners' commission, devoted to their release and headed by Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, who during the Taliban rule served as justice minister and the "virtue and vice" minister in charge of religious police.
Built in the 1970s to house 5,000 prisoners, Pul-e-Charkhi now has 10,500 prisoners, according to the warden, Akhtar Noorzoi. They are packed in 11 cellblocks surrounded by turrets, guard towers and walls topped with razor wire.
Pul-e-Charkhi prison is Afghanistan's most notorious, with a disturbing history of violence, mass executions and torture. Mass graves have been uncovered dating back to the purges carried out by Kabul's Soviet Union-backed governments of the late 1970s and 1980s. Torture cells and underground holding areas have been unearthed.
Prison authorities said that today the prison is monitored by an Interior Ministry human-rights commission and the International Committee of the Red Cross makes regular visits.
"Torture, mistreatment that's all a thing of the past," said Najeeb Nangyal, the Interior Ministry's director of media and public affairs.
Still, violent outbreaks are not uncommon.
In November, a riot broke out after authorities tried to confiscate cellphones and narcotics. When it ended, 16 prisoners were dead, many of them Taliban. The Taliban said they were targeted.
Analysts and even the United States' Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko said neither Afghanistan nor the U.S. is ready for the Taliban prisoners' release.
Every past attempt at re-integration has been costly and a failure.
A report released in September -- one of several "Lessons Learned" treatises done by Sopko's team during America's $1 trillion involvement in Afghanistan -- said Afghans on both sides of the conflict need to avoid the missteps of the past.
Sopko said Congress should consider funding re-integration only if a peace deal provides a framework for re-integrating ex-combatants, there is strong monitoring of the process and violence is dramatically reduced.
Information for this article was contributed by Kathy Gannon of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/31/2019