Published: March 23, 2007
Aid Workers, Reporters In Afghanistan Fear Spike In Kidnappings After Deal For Italian

The Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan: Anxiety and anger are rippling through Kabul's international community following the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for a kidnapped Italian reporter, with aid workers, diplomats and journalists saying they fear more kidnappings.

Afghans, meanwhile, are dismayed that their government has apparently done nothing to free the Italian's captured Afghan translator after paying such a high price to liberate a foreigner.

La Repubblica reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo was freed Monday by his Taliban kidnappers, two weeks after being captured in the dangerous southern province of Helmand. His Afghan driver was beheaded and his translator, also a journalist, remains in captivity.

Italy pressed Afghanistan to meet the kidnappers' demands, leading to the release of the five prisoners, reportedly including two high-level Taliban — a former spokesman and the brother of the militia's top ground commander, Mullah Dadullah.

The U.S., Britain and the Netherlands, as well as politicians in Italy, sharply criticized the deal.

"We Italians are by now considered unreliable by our own allies," former premier Silvio Berlusconi said. But Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema defended the exchange, saying he did not regret that a life had been saved.

But many here view the swap as having put more lives in danger.

"An (aid) worker or journalist suddenly has so much value," said Rahilla Zafar, an American from Flanagan, Illinois, working in Kabul since December 2005. She asked that her employer not be named so it didn't appear she was speaking on its behalf. "The Taliban now, if they were going to kidnap us, see our lives as worth five or 10 Taliban."

Zafar said she had no plans to go to Helmand — the lawless southern province where Mastrogiacomo was taken captive and the world's leading opium-producing region — but that now she feared being kidnapped in Kabul.

Diplomats and aid workers also were irked by the prisoner swap.

"I think it's really wrong that we negotiate with terrorists," Manizha Naderi, an Afghan-American and the director of the aid group Women for Afghan Women, said. "That encourages further kidnappings and further violence against the foreign community."

Terrorism analysts, however, said the swap was unlikely to increase the threat of kidnappings.

"They're going to keep taking hostages whether there was this exchange or not," said Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "This is part of their strategy."

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University in the U.S., said he was not surprised by the efforts made to secure the Italian's release, but was doubtful they would have a major impact.

"Does negotiating encourage more kidnappings? It seems that not negotiating with them also encourages more. Terrorists and insurgents are going to do what they think they can get away with," he said.

There have been multiple kidnappings in Afghanistan in recent years, often foreigners working on road and engineering projects. There was a spate of kidnappings in Kabul two years ago, but they have since subsided.

Some foreign journalists have successfully traveled through Helmand for interviews with the Taliban in recent months, usually with permission from highly-placed commanders. But a freelance journalist who has worked in Afghanistan for three years said he thinks the Italian exchange has turned reporters into "bargaining chips."

"It's a terrifying thing," said the journalist, who asked that his name not be used for security reasons. "It increases the risk to all of us."

Afghan lawmakers, analysts and the family of Mastrogiacomo's kidnapped translator also have decried the apparent double standard in which five Taliban were freed to secure the Italian's release, but nothing has been done to free the translator.

"A foreigner is released, the Afghan remains a hostage," said Mohammad Qassim Akhgar, a political analyst who works on human rights issues in Afghanistan. "It's so disappointing to the Afghan people."

Ghulam Haydan, the father of the kidnapped translator, Ajmal, said he talked to his son by phone on Thursday for the first time since his capture. He said his son pleaded: "Do something for me, my life is at risk."

"I asked him, 'What does the Taliban want?' And he answered that the government knows. But the government hasn't told us anything," said Haydan, whose right leg was blown off by a mine in the late 1990s.

He said he was furious with the Italian Embassy and the Afghan government for winning the release of Mastrogiacomo but not his 25-year-old son.

"The government doesn't care about my son," he said, wiping tears from his eyes.

Ahmad Zia Rafat, a professor at Kabul University and chief of the National Unity Council, a group of intellectuals, civil servants and lawmakers, noted that two of the Taliban prisoners were "very senior," a morale boost to the hardline militia. A senior Afghan official said former Taliban spokesman Latif Hakimi and Dadullah's brother, Abdul Rahman, had been released.

"I don't know what this government is doing, it was a very big mistake," said Mohammad Kabi Rangbar, a lawmaker in parliament. "Everyone in the future is in danger."