Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi delivered a message from the Taliban leadership to the Korean people through The Korea Times. The Taliban said they had no enmity toward Koreans. The following is a full text of the message translated from Pashto into English. _ ED.
In the name of Allah, the most merciful and mighty,
To our Korean brothers and sisters,
Now that we have released the remaining seven captives, we wish to tell the Korean people that we have no enmity toward you.
It may be that Korean people will be angry with the Taliban for kidnapping their citizens. Also because a lot has been written against us. But we wish to tell the Korean government and people what compelled the Taliban to kidnap the 23 Korean citizens.
Foreign troops led by the United States, have occupied our country. They are attacking our people and killing our women, children and the elderly. Your government, whether it knows it or not, is also part of the international Coalition led by the United States, and a partner in the forceful occupation of our land and the killing of our people.
Like every action has a reaction, so the kidnapping was the reaction to the force used against our people and our country, because your country has also sent its troops here.
You people will also be angry with the Taliban for the killing of two Koreans. But the government of President Karzai and the United States were responsible for their killing because they did not come forward for talks with the Taliban.
Your government is also partly responsible for the killing of the two Koreans, because, being a partner of the Afghan and American government, it should have forced the two to accept our demands in order to ensure the peaceful release of the hostages.
Now that we have released the remaining captives, we wish to tell the Korean people that we have no enmity toward you. We have no bad intentions against your government or your people.
But we do not want you to become part of the fight against our people. And never send missionaries into our land because Afghans love their religion more than their lives. We request your government to act upon our agreement and withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
We have treated the Korean hostages well during their captivity. The Korean people should ask them themselves and the hostages will tell about the Taliban treatment of them. We respect women as our religion also stresses respect for them.
So, they will tell you everything about our treatment of them.