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.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.