Hans Rustad Taliban har tatt 18 mineryddere til fange og sier de skal undersøke om de har arbeidet for amerikanerne før de bestemmer hva som skal skje med dem.
Knapt noe illustrerer Talibans agenda bedre enn at de stiller spørsmål ved mineryddernes politiske tilhørighet. Minerydding kommer afghanerne til gode.
Taliban fighters have seized 18 Afghan mine clearing experts and threatened to kill them if investigations suggest they are working for U.S.-led forces in the country, officials and the insurgents said on Sunday.
The group was seized along with four specialist mine-sniffing dogs, which can take years to train, on Saturday in the Andar district of Ghazni province, part of the eastern and southern «badlands» where the Taliban are at their strongest.
«Our investigation is ongoing and after the investigation we will decide what to do,» Taliban commander Mullah Safiullah told Reuters by satellite phone.
Shohab Hakimi, head of the Mine Detection Dog Centre (MDC) said nine of his staff and nine others from the Mine Clearance Planning Agency (MCPA) were seized at gunpoint.
«For the last 18 years they have worked in Afghanistan for Afghanistan,» he said, appealing to the Taliban to release the deminers.
Afghanistan remains one of the mostly heavily mined countries in the world, a legacy of decades of conflict as well as the 10-year Soviet occupation.
