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 According to Western officials familiar with the matter, President
Barack Obama's senior aides in late December resolved to renew
attempts to arrange the prisoner exchange with the goal of
jump-starting negotiations stalled since last June.
The hope is that the exchange could open the door to more
substantive peace talks on Afghanistan's future.
Reuters has learned that, to further the initiative, U.S. officials
also have held meetings with the government of Qatar, which has
played a mediating role during several years of on-and-off peace
efforts, officials said.
The White House last month sent out a team of officials, including
the Pentagon's chief lawyer, Stephen Preston, to Doha to ensure that
the Qatari government remained willing to host the Taliban detainees
who might be sent there from Guantanamo Bay, the officials said.
Government officials in Qatar reaffirmed that they would support the
transfer under the same conditions as envisioned in previous
discussions, the sources said. U.S. conditions in the past have
included preventing the Taliban members from traveling outside of
Qatar.
Under the plan, Taliban-linked militants would return U.S. Sergeant
Bowe Bergdahl, who was stationed in Paktika province in eastern
Afghanistan when he disappeared under unclear circumstances on June
30, 2009, about two months after arriving in the country.
In another step toward restarting a peace process, Qatar provided
U.S. officials a video showing Bergdahl, which it obtained from the
Taliban, to confirm he remained alive despite his more than four
years in captivity.
News of the video, which U.S. officials said showed Bergdahl
appearing to be in "declining health" but not gravely ill, surfaced
last month, but the footage has not been made public. U.S. officials
said they believed the video was filmed late last year.
The Daily Beast website reported last week that the U.S. government
had sought the video as proof Bergdahl was still alive. The site
also said that a possible exchange of prisoners was part of a
U.S.-backed effort to reach an agreement with the Taliban.
U.S. officials believe Bergdahl, the only known U.S. soldier to
remain missing in the war in Afghanistan, is being held in northwest
Pakistan by Taliban-linked militants. Several officials said they
believe the militants holding Bergdahl are under strict instructions
not to harm him because of the possibility of a prisoner trade.
"Clearly if negotiations with the Taliban do resume at some point
then we will want to talk with them about the safe return of
Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. He has been gone far too long, and we
continue to call for and work towards his safe and immediate
release," said White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.
The White House declined comment on the recent U.S. discussions with
Qatar and the video of Bergdahl.
While the United States has signaled that it is interested in
resuming discussions, the Taliban have not yet responded, officials
said.
In a statement distributed by the U.S. military, Bergdahl's family
responded to the renewed diplomatic efforts to secure the soldier's
freedom: "We welcome this development and we applaud the unity of
purpose and resolve at the White House and the other U.S. government
agencies involved. ... We are cautiously optimistic these
discussions will lead to the safe return of our son after more than
four and a half years in captivity."
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NEW CIVIL WAR PROSPECT
U.S. attempts to arrange peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan
President Hamid Karzai's government have collapsed at least twice in
the past. It is far from clear that the Western-backed Afghan
government and the reclusive Islamist Taliban could reconcile their
vastly different visions for the country's future.
The stakes appear higher now because Karzai is declining to sign a
security agreement between Kabul and Washington that would permit
foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the end of 2014. That
has raised the prospect of renewed civil war.
NATO officials have long said the Afghan conflict will ultimately be
settled at the negotiating table rather than on the battlefield.
"We still maintain that," said a Western official in Kabul, speaking
of the peace process generally. "For that to happen, you need the
Taliban and the elected government, whoever it is, to sit down and
talk to one another." The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
Previously, U.S. officials held numerous meetings with Tayeb Agha, a
former secretary to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and still close to
him. Renewed meetings with Agha would be a key next step.
A host of things could go wrong, as they have in the past.
Last summer, in what appeared to be a breakthrough, the Taliban
announced it was opening an office in Doha to facilitate peace
talks.
But hopes were dashed when the Taliban raised their flag and
declared the office an outpost of the Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan, a reference to the group's repressive rule from 1996 to
2001. Karzai's government was furious and called off its
participation in planned talks in Qatar.
The renewed U.S. initiative does not appear to be linked to an
attempt by the Afghan government to kindle its own peace process.
The possibility that the White House might send senior Taliban
detainees to a third country under unclear custody circumstances has
provoked a backlash from U.S. lawmakers in the past and could do so
again.
The five prisoners include Mohammed Fazl, a former senior commander
of the Taliban army held since early 2002. Not all are military
figures: Khairullah Khairkhwa is a former Taliban regional governor
who is seen by American officials as less dangerous than some
others.
The Afghan government's decision last week to release 65 inmates
that Washington insisted were dangerous Taliban militants angered
U.S. military leaders and lawmakers. It could make it harder for the
White House to argue for transferring much-higher-level Taliban
figures out of U.S. custody.
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball and Lesley Wroughton in
Washington, Amena Bakr in Doha and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul. editing
by Prudence Crowther)
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