Taliban demand exchange of prisoners for kidnapped children

Sep 6, 2011, 12:57 GMT

Islamabad - Taliban militants demanded on Tuesday the release of their prisoners and dissolution of pro-government militias in return for the freedom of at least 20 children taken hostage by the Taliban after they mistakenly crossed into Afghanistan.

The demands were made when the Taliban allowed a group of Afghan journalists, who were brought blindfolded to an unknown site, to interview four abducted children.

A Pakistani Taliban commander calling himself Mullah Ubaidullah also briefed the media, said one of the journalists who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The boys, aged 10 to 18, were kidnapped last Thursday when they were visiting the Ghaki Pass area, a scenic hill resort, in Bajaur district on the border during the Eid al-Fitr holiday. They crossed into the Afghan border province of Kunar to swim in a nearby river.

Taliban militants have claimed responsibility for the kidnappings but have issued no demands yet.

'The parents of these children have allied themselves with the government and they are fighting Taliban,' said Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban movement on Saturday.

All of the children are from the Mamoond tribe that has formed a militia to support government forces who have captured Taliban hideouts in the district and forced the militants to take shelter in adjoining Afghan territory.

In his briefing on Tuesday, Ubaidullah told reporters and photographers that his group was demanding that Taliban prisoners be released and for the lashkars (pro-government militias) that were fighting Taliban to be dissolved.

Pakistani officials said that they were trying to recover the abducted children

Islam Zaif Khan, the top official in the Pakistani district, said Tuesday that contacts were being made at government level between Pakistan and Afghanistan and local security forces were also trying to recover the children.

'We are doing all that can be done,' Khan said.

But the Pakistani government can do little, according to an intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

'The children are in the Afghan province of Kunar over which neither the Afghan government nor NATO has any control. What the Pakistani government can do maximum is to wait for the demands of the Taliban,' he said.

People from the Mamoond tribe said they feel that the government was doing little to help them recover the children.

'It's the government that should find some way to bring back our children,' said a tribal elder Malik Fatih Gul. 'They should perhaps arrest some relatives of Taliban so they could be forced to release our children. They should do something.'

Gul said tribal elders were trying on their own to negotiate with Taliban through some elders from the Mamoond tribe who were settled on the Afghan side of the border.

'Parents are worried that Taliban might brainwash their children and turn them into suicide bombers,' Gul said.

Pakistani militants who have fled Bajaur and taken shelter in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nouristan have been joined by hundreds of Taliban fighters who retreated in the face of operations by Pakistan's army in Swat district.

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