Roughly 10 percent of Afghan rebels have joined reintegration

Roughly 10 per cent of members of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan have joined a Western-backed reintegration programme aimed encouraging people to lay down arms, Nato said Friday. The Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Programme is run by the local government, but is supported by Nato's military mission there, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
British Major General Phil D Jones, who co-ordinates ISAF's work on the subject, told reporters that 2,436 pro-Taliban fighters had joined the programme in its first year of operation. That represents "about 10 per cent" of the insurgency, as "in the past 18 months ISAF has used a rough figure of something in the region of 25,000 people" to estimate their strength.
Afghan official Amin-u-Din Muzafari confirmed the figure provided by the coalition forces. "We can confirm that more than 1,700 Taliban fighters have laid down their weapons so far and joined the process already," Muzafari said, who is a secretary at the High Peace Council, an entity created by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to initiate talks with the Taliban. While Nato emphasises that people are not bribed to stop fighting, former insurgents are given wages for three months to help them find a job or start a business. The Taliban militants were not reachable for comments.