Key in Trump’s deal with the Taliban: Ex-prisoners whose release in 2014 unleashed Republican furor

As American negotiators raced to clinch last month’s landmark deal with the Taliban, several shadowy figures played a surprising but significant role: former Guantanamo Bay detainees whose release in a 2014 prisoner exchange sparked a partisan firestorm.

The so-called Taliban Five, a group of high-level militant inmates traded for an American during the Obama administration, worked behind the scenes to build support for the agreement, current and former U.S. and Taliban officials say.

Several of the men wielded their clout, as prominent figures from the Taliban’s pre-9/11 government and longtime prisoners of the United States, to push months of fractious negotiations toward a deal. One of them, a fearsome former commander accused in the deaths of religious minorities in Afghanistan, traveled at least twice to Pakistan to generate buy-in among skeptical militant commanders, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the negotiations. Continue reading.