The two-page decree – which was signed by Ghani and will be made public later by his office – said that all released Taliban prisoners will have to provide “a written guarantee to not return to the battlefield.”

The decree lays out details about how the prisoners will be released in a systematic manner, a process that it says will begin in four days.

“The process of releasing 1,500 Taliban prisoners will be completed within 15 days, with 100 prisoners walking out of Afghan jails every day,” according to the decree.

Talks between the Taliban and Afghan government to end the war will run parallel with the release, the decree said.

If the talks make progress, the government said it will release a further 500 Taliban prisoners every two weeks until a total of 5,000 Taliban prisoners have been freed.

The decree said that the Taliban will have to stick to its commitment to a reduction in violence during this period and beyond.

The release of the prisoners is part of a confidence-building measure to pave the way for the opening of direct talks between the government and the insurgents, after talks with both sides and the United States individually.

Commanders of the hardline insurgent Islamist group have sent vehicles to be ready to collect the fighters in a prisoner exchange and said they will honour the deal by handing over 1,000 government troops.

It was unclear whether prisoners would be released from other prisons aside from Bagram, a detention facility located next to a U.S. military base.

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Speaking in an event he said, “Radicalisation can be countered. We saw it happening in Kashmir… Today, we see that young children are also being radicalised. They need to be identified and then we need to put them in de-radicalisation camps. The Indian army has not been using hard tactics… Pellet guns are a non-lethal practice. It is sparingly used,” he said.

He added that the “ideology of radicalisation” needs to addressed along with an end to “online radicalisation”.

“As long as there are states which sponsor terrorism, we will have to live with the menace. We need to take the bull by its horns and strike at the root cause,” he said, “If we think war on terrorism is going to end, we are wrong,” Gen Rawat said. He said the countries which are sponsoring terrorism cannot be part of global fight against terror networks.

“You cannot have partners who are partnering global war on terrorism and yet sponsoring terrorism… There has to be diplomatic isolation of those sponsoring terrorism. Any country which is sponsoring terrorism has to be taken to task,” he said.

Speaking about his new role as the chief of defence staff, India’s first, Rawat said, “I think the task is well cut out and we will be able to function within the firm framework which has been laid out for the CDS. I don’t visualise any problems. We’ve had meetings with the three (service) chiefs and a lot of decisions have already been taken in the past 15 days,” he said.

Asked whether he supports negotiations with the Taliban, he said peace talks should be initiated with everybody provided they give up the “weapon of terrorism”.

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Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)  here, Khan also said the least he expects the international community to do is to urge India to lift the curfew in Kashmir.

Responding to a question, Khan said he had urged his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi to “reset” bilateral ties and his government waited to resume talks until after the elections in India were over but then it found that “India is pushing us in the boycott of the Financial Action Task Force to bankrupt us.”

He said that by abrogating Article 370, India had cast aside the UN Security Council resolutions, the Simla Accord and its own Constitution. Khan said he would ask the UN to play its role on the Kashmir issue.

Pakistan has tried to internationalise the Kashmir issue but India has asserted that the abrogation of Article 370 was its “internal matter”. New Delhi has also asked Islamabad to accept the reality and stop its anti-India rhetoric.

When asked about former US defence secretary James Mattis‘ remark that he considered Pakistan to be “the most dangerous” among all countries he had dealt with, Khan said, “I do not think Mattis fully understands why Pakistan became radicalised.”

Khan said Pakistan “committed one of the biggest blunders” when it joined the US war on terror after the 9/11 terror attacks by the al-Qaeda. “I think the Pakistani government should not have pledged what they could not deliver,” Khan said, referring to the then military dictator General Pervez Musharraf’s decision to side with the US.

Pakistan was one of the three countries which recognised the Taliban government in Afghanistan before the US invasion in 2001 there. After the US invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan extended support to American forces against the Taliban.

“In the 1980s, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Pakistan, helped by the US, organised the resistance to the Soviets. The ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) trained militants who were invited from all over the Muslim world to do jihad against the Soviets,” Khan said in response to a question.

“And so we created these militant groups to fight the Soviets… Jihadis were heroes then. Come 1989, Soviets leave Afghanistan, the US packs up and leaves Afghanistan… and we were left with these groups,” he added.

“Then comes 9/11, and Pakistan again joins the US in the war on terror and now we are required to go after these groups as terrorists. They were indoctrinated that fighting foreign occupation is jihad but now when the US arrived in Afghanistan, it was supposed to be terrorism,” Khan added.

“So Pakistan took a real battering in this,” the prime minister said, adding that Pakistan should have stayed neutral in the conflict. He insisted that there could be no military solution in Afghanistan and said he will urge President Donald Trump to resume peace talks. “For 19 years if you have not been able to succeed, you are not going to be able to succeed in another 19 years,” he added.

On Pakistan’s fragile economy, Khan said his government had inherited “the biggest current account deficit” in the country’s history and “so the first year has been a real struggle.” Khan thanked China for helping “when we were at the rock bottom”. “China has given us a great opportunity to lift ourselves up from where we are now,” he added.

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