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AFGHANISTAN: End in Sight to South Korean Hostage Crisis

Ashfaq Yusufzai*

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug 28 2007 (IPS) - A visiting delegation of South Korean Muslims was Tuesday celebrating the sudden breakthrough in talks in Afghanistan, between the Taliban and South Korean officials, on the release of 19 South Koreans taken hostage in July.

Reports reaching this border town say the Taliban have agreed to free all the prisoners in a couple of days following an assurance that South Korea will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by year-end. The East Asian country has about 200 troops serving with an 8,000-strong U.S.-led force, which is separate from the 40,000-member NATO-led force.

In addition, all South Koreans working on reconstruction projects will leave the country by end-August. And, Christian missionaries from South Korea will stay away from Afghanistan.

The Taliban gave up their demand that the South Korean hostages would only be released in exchange for Taliban prisoners in the custody of the Afghan government.

Since Aug. 23, four members of the Korean Muslim Federation (KMF) have been camped in Peshawar to appeal to the Taliban in Afghanistan to release the remaining hostages in their custody and prove that Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood.

The KMF delegation, which ignored security warnings to visit Peshawar, said they had initiated the visit because the small Muslim minority in South Korea has for the first time come under a cloud since the abduction of their compatriots on the Kabul-Kandahar highway.

Two male hostages were killed and two women set free this month by the Taliban who had insisted that the Afghan government should release Taliban prisoners in exchange for the South Korean hostages.

The delegation met several religious leaders including the chief of the powerful Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (S), Maulana Samiul Haq, at his seminary in Akora Khattak (Nowshera). The maulana had assured them his all out support and stated that he would also make a request to the Taliban for the release of the hostages.

"The holy month of Ramadan is approaching. We request the Taliban to release the hostages immediately and prove to the world that the Muslims do not believe in violence," said Suliman Lee Haeng, the imam of the Seoul Central Mosque, told IPS on Monday.

The other members of the delegation include the director of the KMF and naib imam, Abdul Rahman Lee, a member Zaki Jeong, and a Pakistani businessman in Korea, Zulfiqar Ali Khan who was born in Peshawar.

Tensions have been running high in Seoul since the abduction of the 23 South Korean Christians in Afghanistan. "About 15 policemen have been posted at the Central Mosque in Seoul round the clock due to some minor incidents when someone hurled stones in the mosque," said Lee. There are some 35,000 Muslims in South Korea.

He added that some people have resorted to using abusive language against the Muslims. Although the numbers of such people are small, the unfortunate incidents have affected the day- to-day life of Muslims in South Korea, he confided.

The South Korean government tried its best to persuade the U.S. and its allies to put pressure on the Afghan government. But on Aug. 21, Pajhwok Afghan News reported from Kabul that the Hamid Karzai government once again rejected the Taliban demands for the release of prisoners in exchange for the South Koreans.

Presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told journalists the government would never strike a deal with the abductors, which would only encourage kidnapping in the country, Pajhwok reported.

In the past few months, there has been a rash of kidnappings of foreigners including western journalists and foreigners involved in reconstruction projects in the country’s southern provinces where an insurgency is raging.

On Mar. 6, Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo was taken hostage along with his Afghan interpreter and their driver at a Taliban checkpoint in Helmand province in the south. While the Italian was released under a deal in exchange for five Taliban prisoners, the two Afghans were beheaded.

On Aug. 18, two armed men walked into a restaurant in an affluent neighbourhood in Kabul and kidnapped a woman who was a German aid worker with a group that helps Afghan orphans. Afghan police who said the abductors were criminals and not Islamist militants later freed the woman in a raid.

In another hostage situation, Taliban fighters kidnapped two German engineers and their four Afghan colleagues from a dam site in central Wardak province in July. While one engineer was found dead, the other German and Afghans are still in custody. On Aug. 23, Afghan TV aired a video of the German pleading for help.

The Taliban have demanded the withdrawal of all German troops from Afghanistan in return for the German&#39s freedom. Berlin has refused to do so.

The 23 South Koreans, 18 women and five men, were taken away at gunpoint from a bus they were travelling in in Ghazni province, the largest abduction of civilians since the fall of the Taliban in October 2001. The hostages were all volunteers sent to Afghanistan by the Saemmul Church in South Korea.

(*Reporting contributed to by Pajhwok Afghan News)