Taliban offers to swap Korean hostages for fighters

The Taliban in Afghanistan today offered to swap 23 South Korean hostages for imprisoned Taliban fighters.

The militant group had said yesterday that it would kill the South Koreans if Seoul did not withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. But it later changed that demand, saying the Afghan and South Korean governments had until 3.30pm Irish time today to agree to the release of 23 Taliban militants or the Korean hostages would be killed.

South Korea has about 200 troops serving with the 8,000-strong US-led coalition in Afghanistan and largely work on humanitarian projects such as medical assistance and reconstruction work.

The South Korean government informed parliament late last year that it would terminate its military mission in Afghanistan before the end of this year. Overseas troop deployments and their withdrawal need parliamentary approval.

South Korea “has already kicked off preparations as it takes about five to six months,” to bring home troops, a top Defence Ministry official told several MPs, according to Kim Sung-gon, chief of the parliamentary defence committee.

The Defence Ministry confirmed the comments, but stressed that the process had begun well before the Taliban demanded the withdrawal of South Korean troops from the war-ravaged country.

“The process is under way but it wasn’t moved forward due to this issue,” a ministry official said.

South Korean troops run a hospital for Afghan civilians at the US base at Bagram, and the facility has treated over 240,000 patients. The kidnapped civilians are not affiliated with the military.

However, relatives of the kidnap victims urged the government to immediately move forwards its plan, noting Seoul had already decided to bring its soldiers home by end of this year.

The South Koreans were kidnapped on Thursday as they travelled in a privately rented bus on the main road from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar. It is the largest-scale abduction of foreigners since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.