The controversial deal that freed five dangerous Taliban commanders in a trade for US POW Bowe Bergdahl will “definitely” inspire more terrorist kidnappings, an Afghan insurgent leader said.
“It’s better to kidnap one person like Bergdahl than kidnapping hundreds of useless people,” the senior Taliban commander told Time magazine in a report published online Thursday.
“It has encouraged our people. Now everybody will work hard to capture such an important bird.”
Another Taliban commander affiliated with the Haqqani network terror group that held Bergdahl hostage told Time that the POW made several friends among his captors.
The white tunic set and checkered shawl that Bergdahl wore during his videotaped release were parting gifts to show there was no ill will toward him, the second commander said.
“We wanted him to return home with good memories,” he added.
Two men who were Taliban commanders at the time of Bergdahl’s 2009 capture also told NBC News that he was found walking alone, acting strangely and cursing his fellow Americans. They said Taliban fighters rushed to seize Bergdahl after local Afghans reported seeing him.
“Our people at the time couldn’t understand his language, but it was after he was shifted to a safe location, he said he wasn’t happy with his countrymen, but he didn’t intend to convert to Islam or join mujahideen [holy warriors],” one of the commanders said.
The other commander, who left the Taliban in 2010, said he thought Bergdahl “had deserted his army with a mission and wanted to accept Islam, but our people didn’t trust him.”
“That shattered his belief,” he added.
Also Thursday, US officials said the Obama administration justified keeping Congress in the dark about the deal to trade Bergdahl for five Guantanamo Bay detainees because the Taliban threatened to kill him if word of the plan leaked out.
Administration representatives told the entire US Senate during a closed-door briefing Wednesday evening that the threat was relayed by Qatari intermediaries at the height of negotiations to free Bergdhal.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Thursday that “there were real concerns that if this were made public first, his physical security could be in danger more, by either the Taliban walking away or about an individual Taliban member who perhaps was guarding him…that possibly wouldn’t agree and could take harmful action.”
Sen. John McCain, who was tortured as a POW during the Vietnam War, countered that by saying: “In Vietnam, the reason they kept us alive was because we were valuable, not because they liked us or they wanted to respect the rules of war.”
“Everything I know is that an American in the hands of a terrorist organization is so valuable that I do not believe that they would be inclined to murder that individual because then that individual loses all its value,” the Arizona Republican said.
A report also claimed that the US military has evidence Bergdahl walked away from his assigned posts at least twice before he went missing in Afghanistan.
A classified investigation found that Bergdahl left a training range in California and his remote Afghan base, but returned both times, according to the New York Times.
The military concluded that he probably left the last time by sneaking away at night, but stopped short of saying he was planning to desert.
President Obama, speaking in Brussels, said he had no regrets for green-lighting the deal to free Bergdahl despite the growing controversy.
“I make absolutely no apologies for making sure that we get back a young man to his parents and that the American people understand that this is somebody’s child and that we don’t condition whether or not we make the effort to try to get them back,” he said.