It represents the first time the intelligence community has formally warned that the Afghan government could face significantly more serious attacks in Kabul from a resurgent Taliban within months of a U.S. pullout, the officials said, speaking anonymously to discuss classified material.
That was the judgment of the highly respected anti-Taliban leader Abdul Haq, one of the many oppositionists who condemned the American bombing campaign launched in October 2001 as "a big setback" for their efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within, a goal they considered within their reach.
They even agreed to work towards a peace agreement with the Taliban within the next six months.
More important for Gen Sharif, though, is the fact that if there was any measure of sympathy for the Taliban within the army, which was their chief mentor only a decade ago, it must have been washed away in the tears of hundreds of grieving military families across Pakistan.
By late April, truckloads of his fighters had conquered a pair of districts abutting Swat, lifting their flag above government buildings and placing the Taliban within sixty miles of the capital, Islamabad.
His release was the most prominent one sought by the government as part of a broad peace deal it is expected to complete with the Pakistani Taliban within days.
There is also deep distrust of the Taliban within the Afghan government and even more in the wider Afghan population, including in the north and west of the country, where many people who fought the Taliban hold considerable power.
You should go after the specific people responsible for killing – but in Pakistan you are dealing with 50 different groups who call themselves the Taliban; within that will be some who can be reconciled with".
