Abducted aid workers freed in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR — Four Afghan employees of a French development agency who had been abducted by gunmen were released unharmed Tuesday afternoon, according to the country director of the organization.

The four men, who worked for the aid group ACTED, spent a day in the custody of a local militant commander in northwestern Faryab province before a delegation of elders from the area negotiated their release, said Ziggy Garewal, ACTED’s top official in Afghanistan. Afghan officials said they believed the kidnappers were Taliban fighters, but Garewal said their affiliation remained unclear.

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

Personal Post

Gallery

October 2011: Ten years since the war began, security forces continue to fight in Afghanistan as Afghans go about their daily lives.

The Afghan team had been training residents about clean water and were traveling back to their office Monday morning when they were stopped at gunpoint. The kidnappers initially demanded ransom but eventually released the staff members without payment, although they kept their car, Garewal said.

“This was done completely on the basis of negotiation of local community elders,” she said.

Kidnapping of Afghans and foreigners has become a lucrative business for both insurgents and criminal groups in recent years in Afghanistan. ACTED has carried out rural development projects in Faryab for a decade and has had Afghan staff members abducted before. Garewal said the latest incident could limit the group’s work.

“If they’re going to keep threatening to abduct staff . . . the situation is untenable,” she said.

Largely active in southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan, the Taliban in recent years have managed to open pockets of resistance in Faryab and other parts of the north.

Also Tuesday, Afghan and international officials said that the country’s struggle with narcotics continued as opium production rose sharply because of high prices for the crop, which is used to produce heroin. A joint annual survey by the United Nations and the Afghan government showed a 7 percent increase in the plant’s harvest.

Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics minister Zarar Ahmed Moqbel said that the profit from producing one hectare, or 2.5 acres, of opium rose from $4,900 last year to $10,700 this year. The area under cultivation in 2011 covered 131,000 hectares and produced 5,800 tons — up 61 percent from the 3,600 tons produced the previous year.

The top official for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, Jean-Luc Lemahieu, said that insurgents, fighting to drive NATO-led troops from the country, were making tens of millions of dollars from the drug trade.

“We cannot afford to ignore the record profits for non-farmers, such as traders and insurgents, which in turn fuel corruption, criminality and instability. This is a distressing situation,” he said.

Salahuddin, a special correspondent, reported from Kabul.