Freeing of Taliban soldiers a 'good thing', say those who fought them

Sunday February 10, 8:29 PM

SAR CHISMA, Afghanistan (AFP) - The release from prison by Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai of some 350 Taliban soldiers is a "good thing", those who fought bloody battles against them on these plains north of Kabul said.

"When Karzai sets them free, we, too, set them free," said mujahedin commander Abdul Wahid, who lost 15 close friends and fellow soldiers in six years of fighting against the Taliban.

"They were soldiers like us, they committed no crimes."

"They are Afghans and deserve to go free. It is a good thing they have been released."

Karzai expressed similar sentiments when he pardoned the soldiers, most of them aged in their early twenties, at a ceremony at the presidential palace in freezing conditions late Saturday.

Addressing the Taliban, he warned them not to take up arms again but to find jobs and to help rebuild Afghanistan.

He told reporters later that the soldiers were "innocent".

"We decided some time back we would begin to release everybody, those who did not have a bad record or links with terrorists. We just let them go home," he said.

"These are Afghan people. They should go back to their homes and begin their lives. They were conscripts. They were innocent."

Wahid, who led 50 fighters drawn from the village of Sar Chisma, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Kabul, said the area had seen heavy fighting.

"This was the front line," he said at a small barracks on a hill, where the skeletons of buildings and mounds of rubble bear witness to endless rocket and machine gun strikes by the Taliban.

Those who died fighting are buried in a nearby cemetery.

"They were my soldiers, but among them were also my friends and relatives," the 40-year-old commander said.

One of his fighters, Mohammad Yusuf, 26, said his cousin was killed in the fighting. He, too, was philosophical.

"If Karzai has let them go free, it means they did not do any bad things," he said. "They were just soldiers like us."

When it comes to the Taliban leaders, however, the mujahedin fighters are less forgiving.

"They were responsible for all our troubles," said one soldier, Mohamad Amar. "They should be kept in prison for life."

Commander Wahid was even less charitable.

"They should be executed as soon as they are caught. They do not deserve a trial," he said. "We really hate what they did to this country."

The Taliban militia swept to power in 1996 and imposed a harsh form of Sharia, or Islamic, law on the country, banning all forms of westernization and forcing women to leave the workplace and universities.

Girls were also banned from attending school.

The mujahedin of the Northern Alliance and other opposition forces fiercely resisted them, eventually pushing them back late last year, with the help of a concerted US aerial bombardment, to their last bastion, Kandahar in the south, which they surrendered on December 7.

Captured Taliban leaders have been sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by US forces, along with scores of members of the al-Qaeda network of alleged terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, who fought alongside them.

In Kabul, mujahedin soldiers were also forgiving Sunday of the Taliban soldiers Karzai released.