Gul Khan
Special to Korea Times
KABUL--- As talks between the Afghan government, Korean officials and the hostage takers continued for the second day, the majority of Afghans want a safe release of the 23 Korean citizens.
With concerns about the lives of the hostages, many Afghans can't think why the group went to the country's most volatile province, Kandahar at a time when insurgency is on a record high in those areas and kidnapping foreigners has become routine.
Either the Koreans were not provided enough information about the situation in Afghanistan by their respective authorities, or they were adventurous minded to visit the red zone of this insurgency-wracked country.
Kandahar province, which was visited by the Koreans who were on their way to Kabul, the central capital, where their bus was hijacked, is the birthplace of Taliban movement and one of the most dangerous zones in the volatile southern region of Afghanistan.
Militants are frequently attacking Afghan and foreign troops, stationed as part of NATO's peacekeeping mission there as well as detonating landmines and carrying out suicide attacks to target the ISAF/NATO convoys and the Afghan police and army.
The other three provinces in that zone, which are equally dangerous are the Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan. Mostly Canadian troops are stationed in Kandahar province.
Ghazni, the other province where the Koreans were seized by the militants, is also as dangerous as the Kandahar province.
Although location some 75 kilometers from the central capital Kabul, some districts of Ghazni province are in the grip of insurgency since mid 2006.
Qarabagh district of the province, where the 23 Koreans were snatched, is one of the red spots. The other dangerous district is Andar. Hence, going to such a dangerous zone and then passing through it is raising many questions in the mind of Afghans.
Furthermore, the visitors did not inform the Afghan government before visiting the southern zone.
As rightly put by the governor of Ghazni province, they should have informed the government before traveling to the dangerous zone in such a large number.
It is the area where militants are strong and sometime getting support of the locals, such a large number of foreigners can not go unnoticed.
This is why, the militants got prior information, and the bus carrying the Koreans was stopped and hijacked.
The Afghan government, time and again, has asked foreigners not to visit the southern areas without informing the government or securing an escort.
Taliban militants are also kidnapping and sometimes killing locals after accusing them of working with the Afghan government, foreign troops or non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
This is not the first time that foreigners are kidnapped in Afghanistan by the anti-government elements. Just a day earlier before the kidnapping of Koreans, two Germans and their Afghan colleagues were seized by the militants.
The Germans were engineers working on a water dam. The Taliban later announced that they had killed the foreigners and their Afghan colleagues after the German and Afghan governments failed to respond to their demands within the stipulated time.