Group of Taleban switches to government side

Fifty Taleban militants joined forces with the Afghan government through the peace and reconciliation process in the southern Kandahar province on February 27, officials said. The regional head of the National Reconciliation Commission in Kandahar, Abdul Razaq, said most of the men were high-ranking officials with the former Taleban regime. Mullah Mohammad Rasul, one of the ex-militants who has now sided with the government, said he had been governor of the northern province of Faryab under the Taleban regime while his colleague, Mullah Shah Mir, was the police chief of Jowzjan province, also in the north.