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U.S. aims to get Taliban to free Idaho soldier

Plan is to swap 5 Gitmo detainees for Bergdahl

The Columbian
Published: February 18, 2014, 4:00pm

WASHINGTON — In an effort to free American captive Bowe Bergdahl before the bulk of U.S. forces leave Afghanistan this year, the Obama administration has decided to try to resume talks with the Taliban and sweeten an offer to trade Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the Army sergeant, current and former officials said.

Five members of the Afghan Taliban who have been held at Guantanamo for years would be released to protective custody in Qatar in exchange for the release of Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2009 and is thought to be held in Pakistan by the Haqqani network, an allied insurgent group.

To refresh the American offer, which has been on the table for more than two years, senior officials from the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies decided within the past month to allow the simultaneous release of all five men. Taliban representatives had objected to the previous plan to release the prisoners by ones or twos as a test of Taliban and Qatari intermediaries’ ability to make sure the men did not return to militancy.

Two people familiar with the decision stressed that it was the Taliban that broke off negotiations nearly two years ago and that the U.S. door to talks has been open since. The renewed offer has not been formally made, and no State Department or other officials have immediate plans to travel to Doha, Qatar, where any contact facilitated by the Qatari government would take place.

The Pentagon press secretary, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said Friday that U.S. officials are eager to get the soldier back.

“He’s been gone too long,” Kirby told reporters during a briefing. “We want him back. We’ve never stopped trying to bring that about. He’s never far from anyone’s mind here.”

The mid-January decision by officials at the level of deputy secretary would confine any new talks to the prisoner issue. Negotiations would not attempt wider engagement with the Taliban on a host of issues related to the future of Afghanistan. U.S. officials had once hoped to use the prisoner exchange as a means to build confidence for those larger discussions, which would also have involved the Afghan government. Now, the United States is primarily focused on getting Bergdahl home.

Officials at the Pentagon said last month that they had obtained a new video of Bergdahl, the first evidence U.S. officials have seen in nearly three years that the soldier remains alive. They had long been seeking evidence that Bergdahl was still living, because of reports that he had attempted to escape once and because of concerns about his health, a U.S. official said.

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