Word: taliban
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...South Korean government spokesman said Tuesday that Taliban and Korean delegates have negotiated a deal to release the 19 Korean hostages, Christian charity workers, who have been held hostage in Afghanistan since July. According to the spokesman, Taliban militants agreed to release the hostages if Seoul would honor its promise to withdraw troops from Afghanistan by year's end - the South Koreans had said they would withdraw about 200 military personnel from Afghanistan before the kidnapping occurred - and end missionary work in the Islamic country. Seoul has also acceded to the Taliban's demand for removal of all Korean...
...Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman refused to comment, and Taliban spokesmen were unreachable...
Twenty-three South Korean missionaries were taken hostage on July 19 when the Taliban intercepted their bus on a road some 90 miles south of the capital, Kabul. The road is known to be extremely dangerous and few foreigners risk driving it. Two male hostages were later killed and two female hostages have already been released...
...this bodes ill for the Bush Administration's hopes that the general will keep his country together, safeguard its nuclear weapons and help combat a resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda. Washington knows the general needs help, which is why it has covertly encouraged a Musharraf-Bhutto deal, with the goal of rallying the moderate majority. "There's an absence of any other people who could be seen as an effective cohering force inside Pakistan," says an Administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The interest we have had is in trying to bring together the middle of Pakistani society...
...doesn't have the manpower to maintain a significant presence in Iraq and continue ramping up operations in Afghanistan. The government may not yet have figured out exactly how to extricate British troops from Iraq but that calculation is becoming ever more urgent as efforts to fight the Taliban intensify...