Confusion pervades Afghanistan hostage ordeals

Confusion pervades Afghanistan hostage ordeals
By Barry Bearak
Monday, July 23, 2007
IHT

KABUL, Afghanistan: In two continuing hostage situations, this much seems relatively sure: Last Wednesday, the Taliban kidnapped two German engineers and five of their Afghan colleagues. A day later, the insurgents seized 23 other captives, this time South Koreans on a church-sponsored relief mission, mostly women in their 20s and 30s.
Beyond that, little seems certain except that in traditional Afghan fashion, tribal elders have become involved as go-betweens in trying to broker a solution.
On Monday, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who has claimed to be speaking for the Taliban throughout the ordeal, said another day's reprieve had been given to the South Koreans as negotiations continued for their release. By his account, the Taliban are now demanding freedom for all Taliban prisoners being held in Ghazni Province, where the Koreans were abducted, as well as the withdrawal of South Korea's 210 soldiers in Afghanistan.
But Ahmadi may be a spokesman who is not fully informed — or perhaps not even partially informed. Or he may be dispensing intentional lies.
On Saturday, he announced that the two Germans had been fatally shot along with their Afghan colleagues. He even gave precise times for when the executions occurred. But on Monday he took most of it back, saying that only one German was dead and that all the Afghans were alive, including a man who escaped.
This newer version sounded similar to what the Afghan government has been asserting all along: that only one hostage was dead, a German who died of a heart attack.
"No, we did shoot the German," Ahmadi insisted on Monday when his credibility was questioned. "And the other German's situation is very bad. He has diabetes, and the German government should come forward to meet our demands."
As reported by Ahmadi, those demands keep changing as well. He said that 10 Taliban prisoners must be freed immediately, and that all 3,000 German soldiers in Afghanistan withdrawn, an ultimatum that Berlin has emphatically rejected.
Whatever the demands, negotiations are taking place persistently, if not necessarily productively. "Lots of talks are going on," said Ali Shah Ahmadzai, the police chief of Ghazni, south of Kabul. "The elders of Qarabagh District are the mediators. The problem is the Taliban side doesn't have a single viewpoint or a person to make a decision."
These days, "Taliban" is something of a catchall term for loosely affiliated insurgents without a singular command structure. Often, the Afghan government favors the phrase "enemies of the state."
Khial Muhammad Hussaini, a member of Parliament from Ghazni, said he was in Qarabagh, a district in his province, to participate in talks to free the Koreans: "Government officials told me the Taliban will accept me to talk to them directly. I called the Taliban to set up a meeting, and they didn't show up. Then they told me to meet with the tribal elders."
He said independent phone conversations were also going on between the Taliban and representatives of the South Korean and Afghan governments.
"It's a very confusing situation," Hussaini said.