KABUL, 6 November 2004 — Afghan authorities have lost trace of three UN hostages and their kidnappers, as the latest in a series of deadlines for their threatened execution by a Taleban splinter group passed yesterday without word. “We know that they are still in Afghanistan but we don’t know exactly where,” Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP. “We are trying to locate them.”
In the days immediately following the Oct. 28 abduction of the three foreign election workers, Afghan authorities were confident the trio were being kept close to the northwest outskirts of Kabul somewhere in the Paghman valley, a known lair of kidnappers, bandits, and some extremists. But nine days on, investigators have begun to concede they may have been spirited out of the Paghman valley to provinces beyond Kabul.
The kidnappers’ fourth deadline expired at 10:00 a.m. (0530 GMT) with no word on the fate of Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, Shqipe Habibi from Kosovo, and Angelito Nayan from the Philippines, who were snatched at gunpoint from their vehicle in busy lunchtime traffic in Kabul. Mashal said there had been “progress” in seeking a “peaceful release” but would not elaborate. “We continue our efforts to gain their release peacefully — progress has been made in this regard,” he told AFP.
The United Nations was increasingly worried about its employees’ condition. “Given the extreme harsh conditions we have serious concerns for their health. The psychological pressure must be tremendous, not knowing what will happen from one day to the next, away from their friends and families,” UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said late Thursday. Jaishul-Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), a newly-emerged Taleban faction, claims to be holding them and has issued a video of the three and Flanigan’s credit card number to prove its claims.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s first popularly-chosen President Hamid Karzai has vowed to end private militias, signaling a fight against powerful warlords as he claimed his mandate in a sweeping election victory. “The private militias will be eliminated. There will be no private armies,” Karzai said in his acceptance speech late Thursday.
“The major difference between me being president now, and being president in the transitional and interim administrations, is that now I am elected with the direct vote of every Afghan, with the votes of millions of Afghans who came out in snow, rain, and dust storms to vote.”
Karzai won 55.4 percent of the vote with a definitive 39.1 percentage point leader over his nearest rival Yunus Qanuni, the favorite of the powerful alliance of anti-Taleban commanders from northern Afghanistan. Diluting the power of local commanders or “warlords” is widely recognized as one of Karzai’s most important challenges.
