Korean Hostages to be Freed

It looks as though the Korean hostages may be freed today after a breakthrough in talks occurred yesterday between Taliban and South Korean officials. A five-point deal was struck, wherein namely the Koreans agreed to pull their troops out of the country by the end of the year and agreed not to send any more missionaries into Afghanistan. Let’s hope they learned their lesson this time.

Last summer the Afghan government sent back some 1,500 missionaries who had come to Afghanistan to hold candle light vigils and carry out other missionary work. A journalist in Afghanistan told me that some of the women among the group had been dressed in half-skirts, completely oblivious to the strong, conservative tradition in that country. It certainly requires an inordinate amount of naiveté to wander around the country looking for converts in short skirts. Difficult to imagine, but apparently true.

23 hostages were taken en route to Kabul in Ghazni province on July 19. 16 of them were women, disguised in burkas. My sources inside Afghanistan told me that they had chartered a private bus and stopped at a bazaar when they were apprehended. One of the men was taking photos when the incident occurred. Since then, two men were shot dead and two ill women were freed.

When I was discussing the crisis with a friend, he looked at me with surprise when I referred to the hostages as missionaries. “Really?” he said, “How come I haven’t heard anything to that effect?” The answer might lie in what a reporter from AP told me just the other day. She said her higher ups had cautioned eveyone as to how they refer to the captives, stressing that “missionary” was not a descriptive noun they could attach to them. Is witholding information that would drasticly change one’s attitude toward to the victims equivalent to lying? Another point against the mainstream media.

It looks as though the Korean hostages may be freed today after a breakthrough in talks occurred yesterday between Taliban and South Korean officials. A five-point deal was struck, wherein...