Posted on 08/31/2007 9:51:00 AM PDT by mojito
The seven remaining South Korean hostages taken captive last July by the Taliban have been released, and insurgents have vowed they will abduct more foreigners.
"We will do the same thing with the other allies in Afghanistan, because we found this way to be successful," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told The Associated Press by phone on Thursday.
Twenty-three 23 South Koreans, all volunteers from a church group, were kidnapped by Taliban militants on July 19. Two of the male captives were later executed by gunfire.
The group had come to Afghanistan to volunteer at hospitals, and were travelling from Kabul to Kandahar City when the Taliban seized them by gunpoint.
When the last hostages were freed Thursday, men accompanying them handed a note to journalists, claiming the South Koreans had come to convert Muslims.
"They came to our nation to change our faith," the unsigned note read. "The Afghan people have given their lives for their faith. This is the reason we arrested them."
Relatives of the hostages and the South Korean government have maintained the group was only in Afghanistan to help suffering Afghans, not to do missionary work.
The insurgents freed the final hostages Thursday in two groups.
First, two men and two women were released to representatives of the International Red Cross on a road in the Janda area in central Afghanistan.
Hours later, the three remaining hostages -- two women and a man -- were released.
On Wednesday, the Taliban released 12 of the hostages into the care of the Red Cross at three separate locations in central Afghanistan, near the city of Ghazni.
The South Korean government said Tuesday that they reached a deal by agreeing to pull all of their troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2007, as already planned.
The South Koreans also had to agree to stop all missionary work in the country.
Two female South Korean hostages were freed on Aug. 13, before the deal was reached.
Taliban leaders had demanded that prisoners be released in exchange for the Koreans' lives, but the Afghan government said it was not prepared to let go of any prisoners.
Some analysts said negotiating with the Taliban gave the insurgents political legitimacy.
"Taliban now have diplomacy, they have got spokesmen, they value cameras, they have a political dimension for their movement, and their aim is to be recognized as legitimate," Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, told AP.
The South Korean government has said it's common practice to negotiate with hostage-takers.
as predicted. why did they cooperate with these people. appeasement does not work. great job SK, you just emboldened the enemy and put more lives at risk!
When you reinforce bad behavior by rewarding it, it comes as no surprise to me the offending party will continue the bad behavior.
They shouldn’t have made any deal at all, it just encourages more of the same.
Finally, if Christian ‘missionaries’ insist on going into war zones, believing God will ‘provide’ next time lets test that particular ‘theory’ to its fullest extent.
Understand $$$ were exchanged here plain and simple - SK should have sent an additional 1000 soldiers into Stan to hunt down these SOBs.....that would have been the better course of action for both the short and long run.....But that takes stones and an understanding of the larger world.
Hence the ages old saying, “Never negotiate with terrorists.” We constantly have to re-learn history. It’s getting tougher and tougher to survive in a society that fashions itself as being the most intelligent society in the history of the universe. Boneheads!
I like MY headline better.
I don't know why these "journalists"(terrorist enablers and co-conspirators) aren't arrested and interrogated beaten to within an inch of their worthless, traitorous scumbag lives to reveal the locations of their terrorist pals. Then toss them in prison/hang them for their part in planning to get troops killed so they can get the photo, smuggling terrorists and terrorist supplies, etc.
""We will do the same thing with the other allies in Afghanistan, because we found this way to be successful," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told The Associated Press by phone on Thursday."
Well of course. Spain showed you terrorist scum just how weak and spineless socialist governments are. Just pick any country who has a socialist left wing government, and it pretty much guaranties all ransoms and/or demands asked for will be met.
thanks Spain.
Well the Taliban position is hardly surprising, even during the ‘tolerant’ ‘Golden Age’ of Islam when Christians were allowed to rise to the rank of Grand Vizier to the Caliph of Damascus (St. John of Damascus occupied the post for a while, and even penned anti-Islamic Christian apologetics w/o getting sacked), Muslim jurisprudence was full of discussions of how to treat ‘infidel’ hostages. The options suggested, as I recall were: releasing to prove Muslim generosity, holding for ransom, enslavement, or the (ever-popular, since the ‘Prophet’ favored it) beheading.
Missionaries know the peril they face when they go into a ministry in a hostile country. They are willing to die spreading the word of God. I’m glad they’re free but I do not believe in compromise with an enemy. Bad business!
Did you mean the United Divided States of America?
This is why it is good policy to kill EVERYONE associated with the Taliban....
They are the scourge of the planet — death is the ONLY rehabilitation feasible...
Yep.
Tolerance
Al Qaida/Taliban: Death to the infidels
American Taliban/Republicans: Kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity
Democrats: Live and let live
Marriage
Al Qaida/Taliban: Marriage is only between a man and a woman
American Taliban/Republicans: Marriage is only between a man and a woman
Democrats: Marriage is between any two people who love each other
God
Al Qaida/Taliban: God is on our side and will help us kill our enemies
American Taliban/Republicans: God is on our side and will help us kill our enemies
Democrats: God may or may not exist and will not help us kill anyone
IB4TZ
This is why the Dims are traitors; they're liers. Where is there an "American Taliban" - a religious-military-movement that, by force of arms imposes its will on the nation and offers non-believers either a chance to convert to a believer (even just that your hair cannot be cut) or death. There is no such thing among any people of faith in America. Your lying attempt at slander shows just how vile you really are.
American Taliban/Republicans: Kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
Not only is that a lie, we did not even insist that either Afghanistan or Iraq NOT make Islam the "state religion" in their constitutions; a condition for which many on the left criticized the US government.
"Democrats: Live and let live"...as long as you personally accept homosexual relationships as O.K., and even impose that "O.K." on your religious institutions. Belying the fact that to Dims "tolerance" does not really mean "tolerance", it means tolerance within a leftist political-correct orthodoxy. In other words, tolerance is an Orwelian word when libs use it.
“Belying the fact that to Dims ‘tolerance’ does not really mean ‘tolerance,’ it means tolerance within a leftist political-correct orthodoxy.”
They don’t want tolerance - they have that now.
They want approval, a clean different thing, and that they shall never have.
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