DUSHANBE, October 27, 2015, Asia-Plus – An article entitled “Taliban: Tajikistan Supplied Us Arms In Exchange For Hostages” that was posted on Eurasianet.org’s website on October 26 say that Tajikistan''s government provided the Taliban in Afghanistan with weapons in exchange for the release of four soldiers who had been captured by the Taliban on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, a Taliban official has said.

The four Tajikistani soldiers were captured last December after they got lost hunting for firewood, and were released in June with the help of Qatari mediation.  The terms of the exchange weren''t announced at the time, but now an unnamed senior Taliban leader, in an interview with the American website The Daily Beast , reportedly said that it involved a shipment of weapons from Dushanbe.

The deal was done by the son of a Taliban leader and a scrap metal dealer in Dushanbe, the official said.  “In exchange for the guards’ release, the Taliban wanted weapons," the Daily Beast reported. “‘Dr. Tahir Shamalzai [the Taliban envoy] traveled from Kabul airport to Dushanbe, inspected the weapons, and crossed with the weapons from Tajikistan into Afghanistan,'' a senior Taliban leader tells The Daily Beast ."

The details about the arms shipment are unclear: "Our sources use words like ''big'' and ''significant,'' but won’t go into details," the website reported. "A Taliban sub-commander in Kunduz who goes by the name Qari Omar tells The Daily Beast that the then-commander of forces there, Mullah Rahmatullah, was pleased with the deal."

The Daily Beast frames the event as part of a larger Russian-Taliban cooperation, which seems improbable; the much simpler explanation is that Tajikistan had access to weapons that the Taliban wanted, and needed to get its soldiers back.  The Taliban official made no mention of the Qatari role.

In any case, the fact that Tajikistan supplied the Taliban with arms under any condition suggests that Dushanbe doesn''t in fact see a substantial threat to its security in spite of dramatic Taliban advances in northern Afghanistan.