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AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Give Italy Three Days for Italian Reporter

Analysis by Ricardo Grassi

ROME, Mar 16 2007 (IPS) - The Taliban may have sent their clearest signal about the fate of abducted Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo by executing his driver, preceded by a taped warning that the Italian government has “only two days to save his life by starting negotiations.”

While that deadline has now been extended till Sunday, the death of the driver Sayed Agha was reported early Friday by the independent Pajhwok Afghan News, which also received the audio-tape in which the voices of the Italian reporter and Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah are clearly recognisable.

“Tell them that you are alive, that today is 13th and that if they failed to accept the demands within the 16th it will create problems for you,” the so-called senior Taliban commander is heard telling Mastrogiacomo.

The abducted reporter follows the instructions. “Please do something as they have only two days. Help me,” he appeals.

Mastrogiacomo, 53, war reporter of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, went missing while attempting to interview Taliban leaders in southern Afghanistan along with his two assistants, both Afghans, on Mar. 5.

The Taliban accused him of spying for the British. Helmand, the province in which he was seized with his driver and interpreter, is in the midst of the heaviest round of fighting between U.S., NATO, and Taliban forces since the 2001 war that toppled the Taliban regime.

Dadullah is thought to be the number two in the Taliban after the charismatic Mullah Omar, the long-time leader of the Islamist movement, now an outlawed insurgent force.

According to Danish Karokhel, director of Pajhwok, the Italian government should negotiate directly with Dadullah. “Italy is negotiating with the wrong people,” he said in an email to IPS. “The only one that counts and decides is Mullah Dadullah.”

On Friday morning, Shahbuddin Atal, identifying himself as Dadullah’s spokesperson, informed Pajhwok that the driver was found guilty of spying for the foreign troops in Helmand and was executed. Moreover, Dadullah’s spokesperson confirmed that negotiations were continuing with Italian officials for the release of the journalist and his interpreter and that their fate would be decided by the evening – a deadline that has now been extended.

However, Italian Foreign Minister, Massimo D’Alema, has denied that the government is talking to the Taliban. On being informed about the audio-taped message, he said the government “is not negotiating with the Taliban but using humanitarian channels.”

‘Emergency’, the well-known non-governmental group, which runs a hospital in Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand, could be liaising between the two sides. They had given Italian authorities the video shown on television on Wednesday of Mastrogiacomo appealing to Prime Minister Romano Prodi to work for his release.

With the Italian government refusing to publicly reveal their role in the negotiations with the Taliban, the life of the La Repubblica journalist who has worked since 2002 as a staff correspondent in Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq, could be at risk.

It is apparent that the Taliban want to gain legitimacy as a political and military power with which governments should negotiate directly.

Soon after Mastrogiacomo went missing, the Taliban said that the journalist was “arrested” together with his driver and interpreter, for ‘entering our territory without authorisation”. The three were being “interrogated” on suspicion that they were spying, they added.

The Taliban have not been very clear about their conditions for the release of the Italian reporter. At first they had demanded the withdrawal of all Italian forces from Afghanistan and the release of three Taliban spokespersons: Abdul Latif Hakimi, Ustad Yasir and Dr Hanif, who are under arrest in Afghan jails.

Italy’s 1,900-strong contingent in Afghanistan is deputed on peacekeeping duties like border patrolling in the west, reconstruction, and reform of the judiciary. NATO has been urging the Italian government to enlist its soldiers in the fight against the Taliban in the south.

According to Dadullah’s spokesperson, the Italian government was wrong to assist the Afghan government in reforming the judicial system. “The judiciary is meting out injustices to the Afghans, therefore, we are subjecting the Italian journalist to such a practice,” he said. *The author has been working in Afghanistan for the past three years.