 An Afghan girl carries water in the old city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday. / AP-Yonhap |
Korea Times Correspondent
KABUL ― The month of July is no less than a tragedy for Korea when the biggest group of foreigners ever seized in Afghanistan by militants was kidnapped on 19th of July 2007.
The worst came when the Taliban militants, fighting a guerilla war to oust the U.S.-backed government in Kabul and trying to force the nearly 50,000 NATO and Coalition troops to leave the country, heartlessly killed two of the 23 hostages.
The rest were freed in groups as the hostage-taking came to an end after 43 days. Since the release of the last Korean hostage by the end of August 2007, the Afghan capital Kabul was abuzz about the secret deal between the Taliban militants and the Korean embassy with the mediation of some Afghan elders and officials.
What the Taliban and the Afghan officials told the media soon after the release of the last hostage was that the Korean government would not send missionaries into Afghanistan and that the Korean troops would leave the country by the end of that year.
However, the most important question striking many in Kabul and the outside world was the payment of ransom to the militants by the Korean embassy. The main character who played a key role in the release of the hostages was an Afghan elder from Qarabagh district of Ghazni province Zahir Shah.
According to sources close to the elder, the Korean side had allegedly paid some $10 million to the Taliban. However, the Afghan government and the Korean embassy officials are tight-lipped about the payment of ransom while the Taliban also did not officially admit that they had received money from the Korean side.
Some Afghan officials, during their private discussions, later admitted that huge ransom was paid to the Taliban for the release of the remaining 21 Korean nationals.
Some sources also said that the governments of Indonesia and Saudi Arabia had also played their role in the release of the Korean citizens.
Sources close to the Afghan elder Zahir Shah said the mediator had also received a huge sum as fee for his role in arranging the clandestine deal between the two sides.
Why the Koreans were Kidnapped?
The group of Korean missionaries arrived in Kabul on July 15. They registered themselves with the Afghan Interior Ministry on July 16 and left for the northern zone of the country to visit some medical missions the next day.
After spending four days there, they were on way back to the central capital of Kabul via the southern Afghan city of Kandahar when they were waylaid by armed motorcyclists in Leewani Bazaar area of Qarabagh district of Ghazni province and taken to an undisclosed destination.
The province of Ghazni is located some 90 miles south of the central capital and is one of the red spots for insurgency in the war-battered country.
The main reason that led to their kidnapping was they did not adopt precautionary measures while hiring the passenger bus. According to Taliban commanders involved in the kidnapping, they were informed by their men in Kandahar about the large group of foreign citizens traveling in a passenger bus.
The security situation in Afghanistan does not allow foreigners to travel outside Kabul in such large groups without escort. Secondly, it is said that the driver of the bus, who fled the scene and was never heard of again, had informed the Taliban about the travel schedule of the Korean citizens.
Taliban commanders, in interviews with this scribe and other media outlets, later admitted that they did not know who the foreigners on board the bus traveling from Kandahar to Kabul were.
``We were just told that a group of foreigners was on board a passenger bus on the Kabul-Kandahar Highway,'' said commander Abdullah who was one of the kidnappers in Ghazni province.
Inefficiency of Afghan Security
The 43-day hostage-taking pointed to the weakness of the Afghan police and the strength of the Taliban militants in Afghanistan. The Afghan security agencies, helped by the foreign troops, could not manage in all that time to get an idea as to the secret locations where the militants kept the hostage.
During those days, some reports also appeared that the hostages had been shifted to the tribal areas of Pakistan, which later proved wrong as all the abductees were handed over to the Red Cross officials in the districts of Qarabagh and Andar in Ghazni province.
Conversion of Afghan to Christianity
After the kidnapping of the Korean citizens, some elements propagated that those abducted were Korean missionaries who were on a mission to convert Afghan citizen to Christianity.
Although, groups of citizens as well as religious scholars in Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul provinces of Afghanistan staged peaceful protest demonstrations and made passionate appeals to the Taliban to ensure safe release of the hostages, voices were also heard that ``those abducted must be punished because they were involved in conversion of Muslims to Christianity.''
Thus the kidnapping conveyed a message to the Korean missionaries visiting Afghanistan that Afghan society is rigid in regard to their customs and traditions and their religions and precaution must be made whenever they visit this country.
Not Fully Guided
The kidnapping episode showed that the missionaries were not fully informed about Afghanistan before their visit to the war-ravaged country otherwise they would not travel in such a large group and without escort. They would not travel by road, which is very risky for non-Afghans.
Although the group of 23 men and women were on a medical-aid trip, Afghans in the conservative Kandahar province came to believe that the Koreans were Christian missionaries who were on a mission to convert their fellow Muslims to Christianity. Had their medical-aid mission been properly propagated before their trip to Kandahar or other parts of Afghanistan, they hopefully would not have faced such a big problem.
Emboldened Taliban
The kidnapping and payment of ransom for the release of the abductees encouraged the militants so much that they vowed to kidnap more foreigners visiting Afghanistan. The militants, on one hand received a huge sum in ransom, and on the other hand conveyed the message loud and clear to the Afghan government that they were powerful enough to kidnap large groups of foreigners and keep them in captivity for as long as 43 days without the reach of the Afghan police and army as well as foreign troops.
The kidnapping of Koreans was followed by the kidnapping of two Germans and then a French national. One of the two kidnapped Germans was killed while the other was freed. The French national was also freed after an apparent payment of huge ransom.
Taliban Leaders
Although the Afghan government is reluctant to say anything about the secret deal with the Taliban for the release of the Korean citizens, some officials privately admitted that the government had released some Taliban leaders from jails besides the payment of the huge ransom to the militants.
What Next?
The Korean government had deployed around 200 troops at the US' Bagram base to play a role in the U.S. war against terror in Afghanistan. In this situation, the sending of more Korean missionaries to Afghanistan would be dangerous and they might face abductions at the hands of Taliban militants in the future as well.
