The Obama administration’s release of five Taliban leaders has sent a wave of alarm among Afghan villagers who once suffered under their violent rule. Of particular concern is Mohammed Fazl, whose scorched-earth offensive devastated the Shomali plain in 1999, forcing 300,000 Afghans to flee for their lives.  

The Wall Street Journal reports:  

The villages of Shomali were once the orchard of central Afghanistan, and the plain's carefully tended vineyards were famous for their grapes.

When the Taliban seized control of this area from their Northern Alliance rivals in 1999, they systematically demolished entire villages, blowing up houses, burning fields and seeding the land with mines, according to two comprehensive studies of war crimes and atrocities during wars in Afghanistan and human rights reports. Mr. Fazl played a major role in the destruction.

"There was not a single undamaged house or garden," said Masjidi Fatehzada, a shopkeeper in Mir Bacha Kot, the district center. "My entire shop was burned to the ground. There was nothing left."

While many Afghans are devastated by the news of the leaders’ release, the Taliban considers the prisoner exchange a massive victory. The Taliban’s former minister of foreign affairs, Mullah Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, called the Bergdahl deal a major "achievement” for the Taliban that provided them important military recognition.

"In terms of military significance," Muttawakil said, "Fazl was the most important" of the five freed detainees.

Despite the group's notorious military record, Muttawakil said he believed that they were more likely to help with peace talks with Kabul than return to the battlefield. Many Afghans, however, do not feel so confident in the freed Taliban leaders' peaceful intentions.