Kidnapping on the Rise in Helmand

It may have been Ajab Gul’s shop in Lashkar Gah that marked him out as a worthwhile target for the criminals who seized him while he was on his way home one evening.



“A group of men in a [Toyota] Corolla ran into my motorcycle, and then blindfolded me and took me away,” said Ajab Gul, 22.



More than a month later, Ajab Gul, 22, could not speak of his ordeal without showing his pain and fear. As he spoke, tears coursed down his cheeks and his body began to shake.



“A group of men in a [Toyota] Corolla ran into my motorcycle, and then blindfolded me and took me away,” he said.



His abductors held him for three days, giving him neither food nor water, and never removing the blindfold.



“On the third day, they took me out of my prison,” he said. “They had beheaded two men because their families had not paid up. When I saw the bodies, I was really frightened. Then they asked me for my brother’s phone number, and they told him to bring them one million afghani [20,000 US dollars].”



After protracted negotiations and entreaties, the kidnappers agreed to a ransom of 800,000 afghani, and Ajab Gul was released.



“My family handed over the money in the Sistani area [of Lashkar Gah] at one in the morning. The kidnappers then let me go near a road in the Greshk district,” he said.



The story is being repeated throughout Helmand, where criminals are becoming more and more active because of the impunity created by the conflict in this southern province.



The Taleban insurgency has kept government troops and their foreign allies pinned down in operations which aim, but often fail, to clear the Taleban out of specific areas.



Helmand also has the dubious distinction of being the world top opium producer. This one province supplies over half the world’s heroin.



Now kidnapping for ransom has joined the list of scourges facing Helmand residents.



Faqir Mohammad Askar, Helmand’s security chief, acknowledged that there has been an increase in the number of abductions in the province, but insists the government has taken tough measures to combat it.



“We have recently established 16 police checkpoints in the Marja and Nad Ali districts to combat this problem,” he said.



According to Askar, the incidence of kidnappings has declined since the checkpoints were set up.



"We arrested some kidnappers just 30 minutes after they tried to abduct a child,” he said. “Others who were trying to seize a doctor were arrested after ten minutes. All those we arrested were criminals, not linked to any specific group. Inshallah, we’ll get them all.”



But the government’s efforts did not save 30-year-old Fahim, who was taken as he was traveling home to Nad Ali district, where he has a pharmacy.



“They stopped me no more than a kilometre from a security checkpoint,” he said.



The kidnappers initially asked for two million afghani - 40,000 dollars - but reduced their demand to 1.2 million after negotiations.



“On the fifth day, they took me out of the room where I was being held,” said Fahim. “They gave me an injection. When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed in Greshk district.”



While many observers are quick to blame all the province’s troubles on the Taleban, this particular problem seems to have different roots.



"Those who kidnap civilians are not our fighters,” said Taleban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi. “They are all thieves. When we seize somebody, we release them in exchange for our prisoners. We never hold them for ransom. We only arrest government workers and foreigners, and those who spy for them.”



The Taleban have had several major successes on the kidnapping front. In March, they seized an Italian journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, releasing him after two weeks in exchange for five major Taleban who were being held by the Afghan government.



The Taleban beheaded Mastrogiacomo’s driver Sayed Agha and his translator Ajmal Naqshbandi.



In July, the insurgents took a South Korean church group off a bus, and held them for six weeks before releasing them in exchange for promises that Seoul would withdraw its military contingent from the country by the end of the year. Two of the 23 hostages were killed before the negotiations concluded.



There was some talk - denied by the tribal elders who brokered the negotiations – that money changed hands. But in general, the Taleban’s demands have had more of a political than an economic slant, in contrast to the current spate of abductions where the motive appears to be pure greed.



Hajji Mohammad Nadir, from Marja district, was recently seized by armed men in his house. His story closely mirrors that of other kidnap victims.



“I was getting ready for afternoon prayers when four men came to me,” he said. “They tied my hands and blindfolded me. They put me in a car and took me about one kilometr away. There they kept me for three days. They did not treat me like a human being. They wouldn’t let me pray, and they didn’t feed me. They beat me a lot.”



Like Ajab Gul, the kidnappers gave Nadir a phone on the third day and told him to call his brother.



“They said that if my brother didn’t give them 1.8 million afghani, they would kill me,” he said. “They told me it was the final warning.”



Nadir’s brother sold the family land for 1.5 million Afghani, and borrowed the rest.



Kidnap survivors have little faith that the local security forces can help them, and the crime wave appears to have undermined what little trust they may have had in the government.



Fahim, for one, has not even bothered to file a complaint.



“It is the government that does the kidnappings,” he said bitterly, although he could not provide no evidence for his claim, other than the fact that the security forces did nothing to help him.



“The entire government is a bunch of thieves. They should all quit if they are not able to govern. They have destroyed any stability we may have had.”



IWPR is implementing a journalism training and reporting project in Helmand. This article is the work of a trainee who has chosen not to give his name for security reasons.