Taliban claims it kidnapped election workers
International aid workers were keeping their heads down in Afghanistan today following the brazen daylight kidnapping of a woman from Northern Ireland and two other foreign UN election staff in the capital, Kabul.
The abductions heightened fears of Iraq-style attacks on outsiders helping to rebuild the war-shattered nation.
Investigators reported no progress in the hunt for the trio, abducted from a marked UN vehicle at midday yesterday.
Two of the victims were women: Annetta Flanigan, from Co Armagh, and a Kosovan. The third was a male diplomat from the Philippines. All work for a joint UN Afghan commission overseeing landmark presidential elections.
A man claiming to speak for a Taliban splinter group, Jamiat Jaish-al Muslimeen, said it was responsible for the kidnappings.
Ishaq Manzoor said it had staged the kidnapping and taken the three to a “safe place.”
“We are checking their identities and we will demand that if their countries have forces in Afghanistan they should withdraw them,” he said in a satellite telephone call.
About a half-dozen purported Taliban spokesman call local and international media groups to make claims and take responsibility for attacks. Sometimes their claims prove false, and their links to the Taliban are impossible to verify.
The abductions came a week after a suicide attack killed an American woman and an Afghan teenager in the normally secure Afghan capital, and ahead of final results due in the coming days for the historic poll, set to install US backed interim leader Hamid Karzai as the nation’s first elected president.
Staff of aid agencies were told to restrict all but essential movements around Kabul – which is patrolled by thousands of Nato peacekeepers, making it usually one of the safest places in the country.
“It’s an ominous development,” said Paul Barker of the aid group CARE International. “We’ve not seen this kind of incident in Kabul before and I think we are still trying to figure out if it is a new trend or a one-off. Until it’s resolved, we won’t really know.”
Afghan and Nato forces have mounted roadblocks around the city, while police and troops search houses. The American military said it was ready to help in the search.
“We’re still searching but we haven’t been able to find them. We’ve got no leads,” Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal said today.
The three were abducted about half a mile from an election office in Kabul.
Their Afghan driver, who was beaten and left behind, told investigators about five armed men in uniform got out of a black four-wheel-drive vehicle with tinted windows that pulled in front of their UN vehicle. They forced the foreigners into their car and drove off.
In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the world body was hoping for their “immediate and unconditional release.”
Suspected Taliban rebels have kidnapped foreigners on several occasions during the past year in southern Afghanistan, but never in the capital.
In March, a Turkish engineer was shot dead and another abducted along the main Kabul-Kandahar highway. The survivor was released unharmed after three months.
About 1,000 people have died in political violence in Afghanistan this year, including more than 30 American soldiers. Still, it has not involved abductions or suicide attacks of the intensity seen in Iraq.
While a string of bombings and shootings killed at least a dozen election workers ahead of the presidential vote, polling day passed relatively peacefully, despite Taliban threats to sabotage it.
