Taliban in no hurry over Korean
hostages By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush
and Afghan President Hamid Karzai avoided the
slightest public mention on Monday of the single
most immediate issue pressing the alliance in
Afghanistan: what to do about 21 South Korean
hostages held by the Taliban since July 19.
The two leaders, standing side by side
after talks at the US president's weekend retreat
at Camp David, spoke in generalities about
everything from the pursuit of al-Qaeda leaders to
"corruption" and growing
opium poppies, but seemed to have agreed to say
nothing quotable on whatever they're doing to win
the release of the hostages. Two of the hostages
have already been killed.
Instead, Bush
left it to a spokesman to say bluntly what South
Korean diplomats - and many Korean religious
leaders - did not want to hear. No way will the US
pressure the Afghan government into releasing
Taliban political prisoners in exchange for the
hostages. (This happened this year when Italian
journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo was released in
exchange for five senior Taliban prisoners,
reportedly after intense lobbying by Prime
Minister Romano Prodi.)
Bush and Karzai
had agreed on the no-compromise policy during
their talks, it turned out, but didn't want to go
on record themselves about it. So the quotes came
from Gordon Johndroe, national-security spokesman.
"There will be no quid pro quo," said
Johndroe. "The Taliban cannot be emboldened by
this." In other words, Bush, like Karzai,
preferred to brush off South Korean calls for
"flexibility" - code for bending the rules enough
to free Taliban prisoners - despite Johndroe's
bland assurance that the US is "working to the
[fullest] extent possible with the Afghan and
Korean governments in urging the hostages be
released".
Not that Karzai is averse to
talking about the Taliban's terror tactics. They
do "pose dangers to our innocent people, to
children going to school, to our clergy, to our
engineers, to international aid workers", said
Karzai when asked about the Taliban threat. "It's
a force that's defeated. It's a force that is
frustrated. It's a force that is acting in
cowardice in killing children going to school."
If Karzai had wanted to place the
kidnapping of the Korean hostages in the same
context, he clearly agreed with his US host to
stay away from that aspect of Taliban terrorism as
long as US and Korean security concerns collided
in a region where the two countries are supposed
to be working together.
Until the
kidnapping on July 19 of 23 Koreans, all
aid-givers from a church near Seoul, South Korea
seemed to be supporting US aims in Afghanistan, as
in Iraq. About 200 South Korean troops have been
on duty as medics and engineers in Afghanistan - a
relatively small but significant show of South
Korean cooperation.
The kidnapping raises
questions not just about South Korean support of
the allied effort in the Middle East, but also
about the US-Korean alliance. The Americans can't
find an answer to the puzzle: how to convince the
Koreans they are doing all possible to bring about
the release of the hostages and still demonstrate
the toughness needed to buttress the hard-pressed
Afghan regime.
It was just a coincidence
that Karzai was Bush's guest while US and South
Korean diplomats were trying to figure out how to
resolve the hostage issue without compromising
themselves and their policies.
While the
South Koreans are looking for Taliban contacts
with whom to negotiate, the Americans believe
passionately that freeing prisoners in exchange
for the release of the hostages would undermine
Karzai's government and the whole campaign against
the Taliban.
About all the Americans have
been able to do that has answered South Korean
concerns is to promise no military operations to
try to "rescue" the hostages.
The Afghan
government had appeared on the verge of mounting
such an operation, but clearly most of the
captives would have been killed either by the
Taliban kidnappers or allied fire. Nor was there
any guarantee of finding the hostages. The Taliban
at last report have separated them into groups of
two or three over a wide area, a ruse that would
make any rescue mission a protracted offensive.
South Korean pleas, though, won't stop
with the promise by the US not to go after the
hostages militarily. South Koreans are convinced
the United States holds the key to the hostages'
freedom, and that is a prisoner-hostage swap. Any
other response from the US is not likely to
satisfy Koreans.
The standoff over the
hostages is sure to impair US-South Korean
relations, and this at a critical period. The US
in the past two or three years has reversed course
on North Korea, pulling back from the hard line it
pursued during the first term of the Bush
administration. Now, in Afghanistan, the US is
again seen as pursuing a hard line while the lives
of South Koreans, most of them young female
nurses, are at stake.
That perception
plays into the hands of the North Koreans, who
have revved up their rhetoric again after going
through with the gesture of shutting down their
5-megawatt "experimental" nuclear reactor at
Yongbyon. North Korea, predictably enough, is
refusing to do anything about the next crucial
steps in living up to the February 13 six-party
agreement under which it is to abandon its entire
nuclear-weapons program.
North Korean
Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun has talked of the
need for "action for action" - meaning the US has
to respond to a long list of North Korean demands
before Pyongyang will consider listing its
complete inventory of nuclear facilities and
warheads, much less giving them up.
The US
has already compromised its position in the long
dispute over North Korea's counterfeit currency by
working out an elaborate arrangement under which
North Korean funds in Banco Delta Asia in Macau
were transferred through the US Federal Reserve
Bank in New York to the Russian central bank and
then deposited in a North Korean account. North
Korea in return has offered no assurance that it
has stopped counterfeiting US$100 bills -
something it always denied anyway - and is
certainly believed to be continuing with its
export of narcotics and arms.
In the face
of the latest North Korean demands (including that
Washington lift its "hostile policy" toward
Pyongyang), the US again is in the position of
appearing "hardline" by refusing to budge until
North Korea moves on the next step of the February
agreement. Many South Koreans might appreciate the
US position on North Korea, but support for the US
among Koreans is sure to diminish while the
country waits for its hostages to come home.
South Korean leftists, who have been
demonstrating for several years against sending
Korean troops to the Middle East, now have an easy
cause around which to rally support. They accuse
the Americans of deserting the Korean hostages,
leaving them to die when all the US needs to do is
get Karzai to free some prisoners.
The
problem is still more difficult, considering the
politics of South Korean Christians. Some
Christian clergy have been at the forefront of
anti-American demonstrations at which the same
familiar faces seem to show up every time.
Basically, however, Korean Christians are not only
conservative, they are also anti-communist. That's
to be expected in view of the repression of all
forms of Christianity in North Korea, where
"secret Christians", when discovered reading the
Bible or worshipping in secrecy, are imprisoned,
tortured and, in many cases, executed.
The
easy way out of the hostage dilemma in Afghanistan
would be to arrange an enormous payoff - something
Washington and Kabul might not like but would not
stop. The Taliban, however, want more, creating a
crisis, like the standoff on North Korea's nuclear
weapons, to which there appears to be no easy way
out.
Journalist Donald Kirk has
been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30
years. (Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about
sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
