The Afghan government threatened to use force against Taliban fighters holding 22 South Korean aid workers on Saturday unless the 10-day kidnapping crisis was resolved quickly.
The insurgents executed one hostage last week as Korean and Afghan negotiators scrambled to find a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Now officials warn that the time for talking is running out.
”We believe in talks, and if dialogue fails then we will resort to other means,” said Deputy Interior Minister Munir Mangal, who is heading a government crisis-response team. Asked if that meant the use of force, he replied: ”Certainly.”
United States and Afghan forces are on standby in the central Ghazni province, where the hostages were snatched from a public bus travelling between Kandahar and Kabul on July 19. In a phone interview with an Afghan journalist, one hostage said on Saturday they had been split into groups.
”We are tired and being moved from one location to another,” the unidentified woman told Reuters in broken Dari. ”We are being kept in separate groups and are not aware of each other.”
A Taliban spokesperson reiterated threats to kill the South Koreans, who belong to the Saemmul Christian Church, unless demands for the release of jailed insurgents were met. On Friday, the Taliban said the government had agreed in principle to free some prisoners; the Interior Ministry denied this.
The South Korean envoy, Baek Jong-chun, held talks with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul while a former Taliban commander turned parliamentarian, Abdul Salaam Rocketi, joined negotiations led by tribal leaders in Ghazni.
Eighteen of the hostages, mostly nurses and English teachers in their 20s and 30s, are women. Members of an evangelical church, they have been criticised for ignoring strict warnings against missionary work. A Western official in Kandahar — the former centre of Taliban rule — said the aid workers ran a small medical centre in the city centre that attracted some of the city’s poorest residents.
A security official said that their bus trip from Kandahar to Kabul along one of Afghanistan’s most dangerous roads was ”pure stupidity”. The South Korean embassy in Kabul has denied that the group was involved in missionary work.
The Taliban have kidnapped several foreigners in recent years, but Bae Hyung-kyu, the pastor leading the South Korean group, whose body was dumped on the roadside with 10 bullet holes on Wednesday, was the first to be killed.
Previous kidnappings have been resolved after ransom payments were made and, in at least one case, Taliban prisoners released. Now Karzai is under pressure not to accede to Taliban demands after Mansoor Dadullah, a militant freed in a deal in March, rose to become a senior insurgent commander.
Meanwhile, British troops continued to battle for control of the Gereshk Valley in Helmand, where one British soldier was killed near the village of Mirmandab, the Ministry of Defence said on Saturday. Three other Nato soldiers and an Afghan soldier died in attacks elsewhere in Afghanistan on Saturday. — Guardian Unlimited Â