KANDAHAR, Afghanistan?The Taliban justice minister and several other high-ranking figures of the ousted ruling militia surrendered to the new Afghan government but were allowed to go free, a Kandahar commander said Wednesday, despite U.S. requests for the handover of top Taliban leaders.
The White House would not comment, but Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier that U.S. officials wanted top Taliban leaders turned over.
Nooruddin Turabi, the Taliban’s one-eyed, one-legged justice minister, authored some of the hardline Islamic militia’s most repressive edicts?particularly those affecting women?and established the feared religious police.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to bolster the new government’s authority in the capital, Prime Minister Hamid Karzai ordered armed men to leave Kabul’s streets and return to their barracks within three days or be put in jail, Interior Minister Younus Qanooni said Wednesday.
The order allows only uniformed police on Kabul’s streets, where fighters from various factions bristling with rocket launchers and automatic weapons have moved freely since the Nov. 13 departure of the Taliban. International peacekeepers in the city are also armed.
Jalal Khan, a close associate of Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha, told The Associated Press that the surrendering Taliban leaders had met officials in government of the southern city and received general amnesty after recognizing Karzai’s interim administration.
They have been allowed to go back to their homes and live with their families, Khan said.
“Those men who have surrendered are our brothers and we have allowed them to live in a peaceful manner. They will not be handed over to America,” Khan said. “However, they will not participate in politics.”
Khan initially said the ex regime’s defense minister had been arrested. But Yousaf Pashtoon, an aide to the Kandahar governor, said late Wednesday that the man was actually a former Taliban frontline commander with the same name?Mullah Ubaidullah, also spelled Obeidullah.
Justice minister Turabi had been a leading architect of the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law. His religious police roamed the streets beating women considered not properly covered, as well as men who trimmed their beards or cut their hair.
Others who were reported to have surrendered were Abdul Haq, former security chief of Herat province, an ancient cultural crossroads where the Taliban’s crude, extreme Islamic rule was never well accepted, the minister of mines, Mullah Saadudin, and senior officials Raees Abdul Wahid, Abdul Salam Rakti and Mohammad Sadiq.
Myers said Tuesday at the Pentagon that U.S. officials were looking into reports of the surrender. “Obviously individuals of that stature in the Taliban leadership are of great interest to the United States, and we would expect them to be turned over,” he said.
In Kandahar, Khan said the Taliban officials were let go on condition they swear to obey the interim government and recognize its sovereignty, which they did, he said.
“From the very start we have said when they surrender, and give up their guns and their cars, they will be given amnesty,” Khan said.
Intelligence Ministry officials in Kabul would not comment Wednesday on the reported surrender and amnesties.