KABUL, 29 April 2007 — A French woman released by Afghanistan’s Taleban yesterday made a tearful appeal for the rebels to free a Frenchman and three Afghan hostages, saying her freedom was nothing without theirs. The aid worker, whose name was given only as Celine, spoke to international media at an emotional press conference at the French Embassy in Kabul hours after being set free in the southern province of Kandahar.
Celine read part of a letter the Taleban gave her on her release, which said French troops must leave Afghanistan. “Now we want from the French to leave our country, it is our right,” she read. Shaking and weeping, Celine then begged the rebels to free Frenchman Eric and three Afghans who were also abducted in the southwestern province of Nimroz on April 3.
All five work for French nongovernmental organization, Terre d’Enfance (A World For Our Children). “Eric came, like me, to Afghanistan as a friend. Hashim, Rasoul and Azrat are Afghans. They are Muslims, they are their brothers. They have children who are waiting for them,” she said.
Meanwhile, former US ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke said yesterday NATO risks losing the war in Afghanistan because of a “tremendous deterioration” in the popularity of the government of US-backed President Hamid Karzai. “Afghanistan represents the ultimate test for NATO,” Holbrooke — who recently toured the war-torn country — told the Brussels Forum, an annual trans-Atlantic security conference.
The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance has 36,000 troops under its command in Afghanistan and the United States has deployed an additional 11,000 troops in the eastern border region with Pakistan.
Holbrooke said he was struck during his visit by how unpopular Karzai’s government had become because of corruption caused by the country’s burgeoning drug problem. “I have heard increasingly that the government has lost its momentum,” he said.
“I can sense a tremendous deterioration in the standing of the government. Afghans are now universally talking about their disappointment with Karzai. Let’s be honest with ourselves ... the government must succeed or else the Taleban will gain from it.”
At a news conference later, Canadian Foreign Minister Peter Mackay said the fate of the allied operation in Afghanistan — in which 54 Canadian soldiers have died so far — hangs by a thread.
“While I don’t want to sound alarmist, I think there is going to be a tipping point unless we are able to stabilize (southern Afghanistan, especially), unless we are able to get on with” building the economy, rule of law and government institutions.
He said Canada has been disappointed by a lack of solidarity within NATO to share the burden of the Afghan operation.
NATO Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer added that: “If we lose ... the consequences will be felt not only in Afghanistan but in all nations.” But Daniel Fried, an assistant US secretary of state, who also attended the conference, said the situation in Afghanistan not as “dire” as Holbrooke had presented it.
