Taliban kill one Korean hostage
Afghanistan’s Taliban killed one of the 23 Korean hostages on Wednesday – July 25 – after Kabul failed to free Taliban prisoners, a spokesman for the group said, adding insurgents would kill more if their demands were not met.
“Since Kabul’s administration did not listen to our demand and did not free our prisoners, the Taliban shot dead a male Korean hostage,” Qari Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters by phone from an unknown location.
Latest deadline expires tonight, Wednesday 21.30 GMT.
Pray as if nobody else prays. . .
AFGHANISTAN: ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS CONTROL THROUGH TERROR
One day Jesus was teaching and healing, and as he looked out over the crowds he felt great compassion for the harassed, helpless and directionless masses. So he instructed his disciples to ask the Lord to send out more workers/servants (see Matthew 9:35-38).
Up to 17,000 Korean Christians serve the Lord abroad in this way, most in war-torn, volatile, hostile and ‘restricted access’ nations. There are around 100 South Korean Christians from a dozen humanitarian organisations and churches presently engaged in voluntary work in war-torn Afghanistan. Since 2002, some 400-500 South Koreans have visited Afghanistan every year in response to the Lord’s sending. They do voluntary work in health, education, agriculture, information technology and other fields for the benefit of the people.
In early August 2006, Korean Christian professionals with the Institute of Asian Culture and Development, a Seoul-based Christian humanitarian-aid group that has run medical clinics in Afghanistan since January 2002) were suddenly deported. The IACD had organised a three-day ‘Peace Festival’ to celebrate five years of Korean aid work in Afghanistan. The festival was to include a medical conference, a round-table on reconstruction and two soccer games at Kabul’s Olympic Stadium between Afghanistan’s national team and a Korean team.
The group’s director, Kang Sung Han, said the aim of the festival was to give ordinary Koreans and Afghanis the opportunity to interact and have fun. But when Muslim clerics protested, the festival was cancelled and the Koreans were deported, citing security concerns. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, while the clerics complained that the Koreans were actively proselytising, a spokesman for the chief of the Afghan National Police said there was absolutely no evidence to support that, adding that if there had been any evidence then the police would have ‘put them in jail according to the law’. In order to maintain their hold over the people, the clerics are depriving the people of a future.
On Thursday 19 July 2007, Taliban militants in Ghazni Province kidnapped 23 South Korean Christians who were in Afghanistan doing medical and humanitarian volunteer work. The Koreans, most of whom are nurses, are members of the Presbyterian ‘Saemmul Church’ in Bundang near Seoul. They were en route to visit a kindergarten in Kandahar which serves some 100 destitute children and war orphans when they were ambushed and kidnapped.
The Taliban is threatening to kill the hostages unless South Korea withdraws its forces (which are non-combatant, engaged only in reconstruction) and the Afghan government releases the 23 Taliban prisoners held in Ghazni Province. This is the largest contingent the Taliban has ever captured. Because the group is so large the Taliban might drag the negotiations along, releasing one hostage (bargaining chip) at a time. They might also feel that because there are so many, they can afford to kill a few to increase the pressure on the two governments. On 24 July, Afghani villagers in Ghazni demonstrated peacefully in the streets for the release of the Korean hostages. Once again, Islamic fundamentalists are robbing the people and exerting control through repression and terror.
South Korea has now banned its citizens from travelling to Afghanistan, one of the neediest places on earth.
PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR:
* God to give the Korean Christian hostages all the grace, strength, endurance, courage and wisdom they need to bring blessings to Afghanis and honour and glory to the Lord in their new circumstances, which are doubtless exceedingly unpleasant.
* God to protect all those who have left home and family, and sacrificed security and comfort to go into Afghanistan in order to help and serve traumatised, needy Afghanis; and may the Lord in his mercy deliver the Korean believers to safety.
* the Holy Spirit of God to draw into humble dependent (or even just desperate) prayerfulness, all those who are in Afghanistan to further freedom and civilisation for the benefit of the people (God’s creation). May they learn dependence, and rejoice in the faithfulness of the Lord our deliverer. (Prayer - Psalm 140:6-8).
* the Taliban, al Qaeda, and all other enemies of civilisation in Afghanistan to be profoundly defeated. Pray that the ‘sword of God will strike them’. (Isaiah 31:8 NLT)
WHO ARE THE TALEBAN?
The last couple of years have seen the re-emergence of the hardline Islamic Taleban movement as a fighting force in Afghanistan.
Nearly five years after losing power in the country, the Taleban are making their presence felt by launching guerrilla operations against Nato forces, killing aid workers and kidnapping foreigners involved in reconstruction work. Parts of eastern and southern Afghanistan have been rendered more and more insecure due to the increasingly daring Taleban attacks.
There has been a huge increase in violent attacks in recent months, particularly in the south where Nato forces are helping the Afghan government to extend its authority. The government blames most of the violence on what it calls “enemies of Afghanistan” - shorthand for the Taleban and their al-Qaeda allies. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to establish with any certainty who is behind some of the violence.
The Taleban first came to prominence in the autumn of 1994. Their leader was a village clergyman Mullah Mohammad Omar, who lost his right eye fighting the occupying forces of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Their target was the feuding warlords known as the mujahideen who had forced the Soviet troops out of the country.
The Taleban’s promise was to restore peace and security and enforce Sharia, or Islamic law, once in power. Afghans, weary of the mujahideen’s excesses and infighting, generally welcomed the Taleban.
Their early popularity was largely due to their success in stamping out corruption, curbing lawlessness and making the roads and the areas under their control safe for commerce to flourish.
From their birthplace in the province of Kandahar in south-western Afghanistan, the Taleban quickly extended their influence. They captured the province of Herat, bordering Iran, in September 1995.
Exactly one year later, they captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, after overthrowing the regime of President Burhanuddin Rabbani and his defence minister, Ahmed Shah Masood. By 1998, they were in control of almost 90% of Afghanistan.
Pakistan ‘the architect’
The circumstances of the Taleban’s emergence remained the centre of controversial debate. Despite repeated denials, Pakistan is seen as the architect of the Taleban enterprise.
Suspicions arose early on when the Taleban went to the rescue of a Pakistani convoy stranded in Kandahar following attacks and looting by rival mujahideen groups. Many of the Afghans who joined the Taleban were educated in madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan.
Pakistan was also one of only three countries, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which recognised the Taleban regime. It was also the last country to break diplomatic ties with the Taleban.
The US put Pakistan under pressure to do so after the 11 September, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington.
Pashtun sympathies
The Taleban were overwhelmingly Pashtun, the ethnic group that forms the majority of Afghanistan’s diverse population and also inhabits the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan in neighbouring Pakistan.
Even now, the resurgent Taleban draw considerable sympathy from fellow Pashtuns in Pakistan. Some of their fugitive leaders are able to find refuge across the long and porous border in NWFP and Balochistan.
Once in power, the Taleban set up an authoritarian administration that tolerated no opposition to their hardline policies. Islamic punishments, such as public executions of convicted murderers and amputations of those charged with thefts, were introduced.
Television, music and cinema were banned after being adjudged as frivolities. Girls aged 10 and above were forbidden from going to school - working women were ordered to stay at home. Men were required to grow beards and women had to wear the burqa.
The Taleban’s religious police earned notoriety as they tried to implement these restrictions. Taleban policies, particularly those concerning human and women’s rights, also brought them into conflict with the international community.
Bin Laden and al-Qaeda
But what was to bring much greater conflict was the Taleban’s role as host to Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda movement.
The August 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left more than 225 people dead prompted Washington to present the Taleban with a difficult choice.
They were required to expel Bin Laden, who the US held responsible for those bombings and other attacks, or face the consequences. When the Taleban refused to hand over their Saudi-born guest, US President Bill Clinton ordered a missile attack on a Bin Laden camp in southern Afghanistan.
As further punishment, the US persuaded the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Taleban-ruled Afghanistan in 1999.
Harsher UN sanctions were put in place in 2001 in another effort to force the Taleban to deliver bin Laden. The sanctions, and the denial of Afghanistan’s seat in the UN to the Taleban, increased the political and diplomatic isolation of their regime.
It also prompted it to pursue a more isolationist and fundamentalist agenda. For example, the Taleban went ahead with the destruction of the priceless Bamiyan Buddha statues carved out of a mountain cliff in central Afghanistan, despite international outrage.
US onslaught
The events of 11 September signalled the beginning of the end for the Taleban’s control of Afghanistan. The US reiterated its demand that the Taleban hand over bin Laden to face trial for masterminding the attacks on US soil. But again, the Taleban defended bin Laden and refused to expel him.
On October 7, 2001, a US-led coalition intervened militarily in Afghanistan and by the first week of December the Taleban regime had collapsed.
Mullah Omar and most of the other senior Taleban leaders, along with Bin Laden and some of his senior al-Qaeda associates, survived the American onslaught.
Mullah Omar and his comrades have evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world and are believed to be guiding the resurgent Taleban. The Taleban retreat enabled them to limit their human and material losses.
However, differences on strategy and Mullah Omar’s authoritarian style have prompted some Taleban to quit the movement or become inactive.
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