PESHAWAR, Dec 26: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it has helped trace over 150 Pakistani prisoners in northern Afghanistan and is in the process of registering thousands others held in prisons all over Afghanistan.

“We have been able to bring and deliver messages to 165 families in Malakand division of the NWFP and we hope to get more messages,” Michael Khambatta, head of ICRC sub-delegation in Peshawar, told Dawn.

Thousands of Pakistani militants who had gone to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban in the face of US attack in October are missing, many of them are thought to have been killed.

The Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat Mohammadi, a militant Islamic organization campaigning for the enforcement of Shariat in the Malakand division in northern NWFP, had sent over 7000 of its supporters to Afghanistan.

The TNSM leader, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, who had led his armed followers, returned last month and is now serving a three-year imprisonment in Dera Ismail Khan.

The TNSM says it has no clue as to the wellbeing and whereabouts of its missing activists in Afghanistan.

A group of Peshawar-based Afghan leaders has secured the release of over 200 Pakistani militants from prisons in eastern Afghanistan and plans to setup offices in northern Afghanistan to trace hundreds of others still missing. The militants have been put behind the bars upon their arrival for illegal border-crossing.

The ICRC official said it had been able to bring messages of 165 Pakistani prisoners from Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan to their families in Malakand, Upper and Lower Dir and Swat — the hotbed of TNSM in the Malakand division. The messages were delivered in collaboration with Pakistan Red Crescent Society. Out of the 205 people from Swat missing in Afghanistan, only 40 had been traced in Wahdat Prison in Mazar.

“They were all very happy,” TNSM Swat Amir Bashirur Rehman said who was present when the messages were being delivered to recipients said.

“It takes quite a bit of time,” the ICRC official said. He said that when the Bagram airbase got ready, the process of collection and delivery of messages would speed up.

Mr Khambatta said the ICRC had registered another 1700 prisoners in Afghanistan and was in the process of registering another 2400 prisoners. But he did not know the number of Afghan Taliban and expatriates.

The biggest concentration of these prisoners, about 3000 of them, is in Shiberghan in northern Afghanistan.