Afghan Taliban Seek Ransom for Two Kidnapped Chinese

[Robb]

Source: Business Week

Afghan Taliban are seeking a ransom payment to release two Chinese engineers they seized on Jan. 16 in the country’s northwest.

Taliban guerrillas based in Faryab province abducted the men, who were working on a road-building project near the border with Turkmenistan, said Ahmed Jawed Bedar, a spokesman for the provincial governor. “The kidnappers said they will release them in exchange for payment,” Bedar said by phone from Meymaneh, the provincial capital.

Bedar said he did not know how much the Taliban are demanding in what is the movement’s first known abduction of Chinese citizens in the country. Akhtar Mohammed, a Taliban commander in western Afghanistan, confirmed by phone that Faryab-based Taliban are holding the Chinese and seeking ransom.

The Chinese government is “making every effort” to rescue the men, who were seized by “unknown armed forces,” foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters in Beijing. China is increasing its presence in Afghanistan after having won the right in 2007 to develop the Aynak copper deposit, the country’s biggest mining project.

Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-19/afghan-taliban-seek-ransom-payment-for-two-kidnapped-chinese.html

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To be clear, although it seems deliberately conflated, the engineers kidnapped were almost certainly not working on the copper mine. The mine is in the Logar province, just south of Kabul. The engineers were kidnapped building a road in the northwest, near the Turkmenistan border.

[The Wielding Truth]

1. Okay, lets watch to see how they respond to "terrorism".

[Robb]

2. This may actually be

...the single most interesting thing to happen in Afghanistan in years.

If the kidnappers are actually Taliban, it suggests a very significant shift in their tactics. China has brought nothing but infrastructure and money into the area in the past three years. It could be said they bought their way into the copper mining rights (outbid the whole world by an awful lot, IIRC) and China's recent agreements with the regional 'Stans have made millionaires overnight.