There is “very little” the U.S. military can do to prevent the five Taliban fighters exchanged for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from returning to the battlefield.
Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, the new director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday that roughly 18 percent of all detainees who have been released from Guantanamo Bay over the last five years have “gone back to business,” and another 11 percent are suspected of having done so.
“We continue to look at monitoring the number of sources that will tell us when these individuals have gone back into business,” Stewart said. “Directly, though, besides notifying folks that these terrorists have gone back into business, there’s very little at this point the DIA could do besides warning of their continued operations.”
The five Taliban leaders — who were released from the U.S.’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in May — are currently being monitored in Qatar. However, the terms of the monitoring agreement there expire a year after their release.
“I still stand by what I said up here before. All five remain in Qatar. All five are being monitored,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said when asked about Stewart’s comments. “We are going to more closely monitor them.”
Quoting Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Kirby said if the five return to the battlefield after the one-year cooling off period is over they will do so at their own peril. “When they return to the battlefield, if they choose to do that, we absolutely have the ability to protect our troops and we will,” he said.
Bergdahl, 28, was swapped on May 31, 2014, for the five Taliban leaders. He was held captive in Pakistan. He allegedly left his platoon’s outpost in the Paktika province of Afghanistan in June 2009, and Army officials are considering whether to charge him with desertion.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that at least one of the five tried to return to the fight.
“We had reason to believe that there was some activities by at least one, centered around potential re-engagement, and we communicated with the government of Qatar over these activities and proper steps are being put in place to further limit it,” Kirby said Friday.
During the hearing Tuesday, Stewart also warned of the growth and reach of radical groups such as the Taliban, al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
