Shocking Details on Secret U.S. Program, Releasing Taliban Detainees to Negotiate For Peace

In what’s being called strategic releases used as a bargaining chip, the U.S. government is releasing high-level Taliban detainees in order to negotiate for peace. A U.S. official spoke to the Washington Post about the secret program, saying, “Everyone agrees they are guilty of what they have done and should remain in detention. Everyone agrees that these are bad guys. But the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Senior Fellow from the Heritage Foundation, Peter Brookes, weighed in on the program. He told Martha MacCallum, “What they’re trying to do, and this program may go back even to the Bush administration if they’re saying several years, is that they want to use these people to try to gain favor with some of these groups including the Taliban

… and they’re trying to get them to move forward or promote security in regions where the military fields that there isn’t a military solution there.”

He added that what makes him feel “comfortable” with this decision is that the military commanders on the ground are involved in decisions “right down to who to release.”

MacCallum asked how this strategy plays into the long term plan for the U.S. in Afghanistan. Brookes said, “If you can in a sense divide these insurgent groups, you know the Haqqani Network from the Taliban … you might be able to have more success. I mean sometimes we’ve used unconventional means such as the Awakening movement in Iraq to help us move forward with our national security objectives.