Taliban announces end of partial truce, says will resume 'offensive operations' against Afghan security forces

The Taliban on Monday said that it will resume “offensive operations” against the security forces in Afghanistan, resulting in the end of a partial truce that preceded the signing of a deal between the insurgents and the United States. The Taliban’s announcement comes a day after Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani said that he would continue the partial truce until negotiations between the government officials and the militants begin, AFP reported. The report added that the talks were likely to begin on 10 March. “The reduction in violence… has ended now and our operations will continue as normal,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid was quoted by AFP as saying. “As per the (US-Taliban) agreement, our mujahideen will not attack foreign forces but our operations will continue against the Kabul administration forces.” [caption id=“attachment_5171571” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The report also said that the Afghan defence ministry said that the government was “checking to see if (the truce) had ended”. “Since the deal signing on Saturday, the Taliban have been publicly celebrating their ‘victory’ over the US,” the report said. Ghani said on Sunday that he will not free thousands of Taliban prisoners ahead of the all-Afghan power-sharing talks which were set for next week, publicly disagreeing with a timetable for a speedy prisoner release laid out on Saturday in a US-Taliban peace agreement. His comments pointed to the first hitch in implementing the fragile deal, which is aimed at ending America’s longest war after more than 18 years and getting rival Afghan factions to agree on their country’s future, AP reported. Still, the US has said a planned American troop withdrawal over the next 14 months is linked to the Taliban’s counter-terrorism performance, not to progress in intra-Afghan talks. The US-Taliban deal signed on Saturday envisioned the release of up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners by the Afghan government ahead of talks between Afghan factions meant to begin on 10 March in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The Taliban was to release up to 1,000 prisoners, the report said. Ghani told a news conference in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday that this wasn’t a promise the United States could make. He said the release of prisoners was a decision for his government to take and that he wasn’t ready to release prisoners before the start of negotiations. “The request has been made by the United States for the release of prisoners and it can be part of the negotiations but it cannot be a precondition," Ghani said. The US-Taliban deal is seen as a historic opportunity to extricate the United States from Afghanistan, a nation convulsed by conflict since the Soviet invasion in December 1979. Yet it could also unravel quickly, particularly if the Taliban fail to deliver on a promise that no terror attacks would be launched from Afghan soil. The intra-Afghan talks between squabbling political factions and the rival Taliban in Afghanistan are even more intricate — even if a potential failure might not slow the withdrawal of American forces. In an interview with The Associated Press, Qatari foreign minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani had said he considered a prisoner exchange an important confidence-building measure. “What we have here is a 14-months agreement that, including in these 14 months, there are several things that need to be accomplished because everything is interconnected," he said Sunday. “And in that agreement, the prisoner exchange will be one of the first confidence-building measures, so it will remain a very critical step that we need to push forward. And we have the delegations ready for the meeting (with) Taliban and others. So I hope that the negotiations will start very soon.” With inputs from agencies