The fate of Taliban POWs in Bagram

Dr. Jassim Taqui

DG Al-Bab Institute for Strategic Studies

Islamabad, July 7, 2021: Following the US exit from the Bagram base, the military circles wonder as to what would be the fate of over 5000 Taliban POWs.

According to the new base’s new chief Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani, the US troops shut off the power at the base and left over 5000 Taliban prisoners. Evidently, the government of Ashraf Ghani is now responsible for their safety.

Ostensibly, the Americans are confused about various aspects of administering Afghanistan in the post-US occupation era. Earlier, the Pentagon maintained that 6500 troops would remain with a mission to protect the US Embassy in Kabul. However, Pentagon decided to station 1000 troops. This shows that Pentagon has still apprehension of looming danger.

The US troops reportedly left Bagram at 03:00 local time on Friday without informing the Afghan Government. The rapidly advancing Taliban towards the Bagram base is believed to be behind the Hassel of earlier exit of the US troops under the cover of the darkness.

Interestingly, the military observers believe that the US authorities could use the Taliban’s POWs as a bargaining chip to compel the Taliban to take part in a peaceful process to form a broad-based coalition government. The objective behind such a move is to stop a possible bloody civil war by sharing powers according to the strength of Afghan factions on the ground. Imminently, the Taliban would have the lion’s share of power in such a formula since it controls over 60 percent of Afghanistan as per UN's latest statistics.

If the Taliban rejected sharing formulation, the POWs could be won over either by the money or the brainwashing technique. In such eventuality, hypnosis would be used to win over the senior leaders of the POWs.