Kabul – Women and Terror

The road of Ghazni, where the incident took place

The most recent news brought from the southern part of the country, is the striking hijacking of a bus full of foreigners in Qarabagh district, southern part of Ghazni province, by the Taliban. 18 foreigners on board, all Korean nationals, are taken hostage by the hijackers on 19 July.

Among the 18 hostages, 15 of them are females. Initially the people were reported as tourists traveling from Kandahar to go back to Kabul, but later confirmation from the news agency reveals that these Koreans are Christians working as volunteers for a Christian missionary group, Saemmul Community Church in Bundang south of Seoul. These people entered Afghanistan on July 13 and were supposed to return home right after they arrive in Kabul. But the incident on their way to Kabul not only delayed their return, but also put a big question mark on their live survival.

This is the largest-scale abduction conducted by the Taliban after 2001. The spokesman of Taliban urged the South Korean government to pull out its 200 troops in the Islamic Republic; otherwise these hostages would be slaughtered.

Today I saw from BBC News the Korean newspapers showing photos of this missionary group. Young women dominated. They were shown smiling upon their departure to Afghanistan. Nobody should have expected the fate. The family members of the kidnapped were urging the Korean government to take necessary action to save the life of the hostages.

The Korean missionary groups are infamous of preaching activities in ‘difficult-to-convert’ areas, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. Last year, hundreds of Christians from South Korea were ordered to leave Afghanistan, amid rumors they were involved in religious conversion activity, spreading Christianity, in deeply religious conservative Islamic country.

The embassy of Korea in Kabul refused to say much about this incident, but apparently the government of Korea is not supporting the activity of its citizens in missionary works in the country. Last year there was a plan of arrival of more than a thousand of Koreans to Afghanistan at the same time, in a mission of cultural parade. The controversial plan was cancelled, probably due to unwelcoming gestures from the international and local authorities.

The situation in Afghanistan recently has turned to be sourer. Last week a suicide bomber blasted after a Turkish diplomatic convoy and killed a Turkish plus a civilian. Then, one day before the Korean bus kidnapping stuff, two German engineers were taken hostage by Taliban in Maidan Wardak. Today, I read from the news that these two German hostages, along with their five Afghan colleagues, were already executed after the expiry of the first deadline. The Taliban spokesman said that the Koreans were given only 24 hours of deadline until the Afghan government responding their demands – to release Taliban men from the jail in Ghazni. Will the group of a dozen and a half Koreans face the same fate? Only God knows.

While 15 Korean women now are probably counting their minutes somewhere there in deep desert in Ghazni, another woman faces the similar fate, but due to different reason. A Pakistani woman, suspected by the intelligence as a woman suicide bomber, has reported to sneak into the city in the Khost province since few days back. All issues about this bomber hidden in veil have caused tensed security in the southern province. The Pakistani, if she is real, might now also count her last minutes before the ‘holy’ mission, or the last minutes before she changed her mind.

My prayers go to these women on their last minutes.