UPDATE: The ransom money negotiations must have gone well because the Taliban have reportedly planned to release two female hostages. The reported going rate for the Korean hostages is $1 million per hostage. So in theory $19 million dollars should be enough to end the hostage crisis. How come I don’t think things will end that easily?
More over at Marmot and Nomad.
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The announcement of the Second Inter-Korean summit has pretty much knocked the hostage crisis out of the headlines for now, but there has only been a few developments to report anyway. The Taliban and the Korean government were still haggling on a place to conduct face to face talks, but the Taliban were still demanding that the UN protect them. This demand continued to be quite ironic considering the fact that the Taliban has been committed to killing UN aid workers in Afghanistan.
Since the UN would not provide a security guarantee the Taliban instead turned to the Red Cross, which also ironically happens to be another organization that the Taliban has murdered aid workers from. The Red Cross has agreed to facilitating the talks which have already reportedly been concluded.
After all the talk that the Taliban did not want ransom money, but only a hostage exchange, it appears that they have now changed their mind and they in fact want ransom money. Also the Korean government has withdrawn all Korean aid workers from Afghanistan in some kind of hope that this would please the Taliban. As if the Taliban cares.
The families of the hostages have sent a letter to the Taliban. I don’t want to make light of what the families are going through, but it is clear where the naivety of these young people who went to Afghanistan came from after reading this letter. Mothers of the hostages are also traveling to Dubai to appeal to Arab countries to help end the hostage crisis. Here is the reported reason why they are going:
"The reason why we are sending women, especially mothers, to Dubai is that Islamic culture has more sympathy for women," said the spokesman, Cha Sung-min.
It is not often you hear "Islamic culture" and "sympathy for women" in the same sentence.
It is interesting to watch this whole crisis play out because the Korean government is basically implementing the Taliban version of the Sunshine Policy. Retreat on all fronts, kiss as much ass as possible, and offer bribes for little in return.
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8:48 am on August 11th, 2007 1
yeah it really shows how much koreans are in the dark about a lot of things
a little reasearch about women in islam would tell you exactly how they are thought of and treated within the religion
10:19 am on August 11th, 2007 2
Why Dubai? What does Emir in Dubai has to do with Talibans? They are the most westernized country in the Saudi peninsula and they definitely did not want to be the one who has any connection to the terrorist organization like Talibans. (You can drink alcohol and buy prosititute in International Resort hotels.)
Only thing that South Korean people know about Dubai is that they are rich country who hires many Korean heavy industry companies to build their infrastructure and they also hires Korean Flight Attendents for Emirate Air.
My relatives in Korea keep on saying that I have worldly broad view compared to South Koreans who only have view with in the peninsula and NEA regional countries. Its no wonder why they let these SamMul Presybetarian Church ChungNyunHae (Young Single Adult Group) members to travel to war torn country like Afghanistan. Many are very clueless when it comes to rest of the world.
1:24 pm on August 11th, 2007 3
The playout of this situation will be most interesting.
One group that has money and wants people, another group that has said people and wants money. Have I missed anything?
12:48 am on August 12th, 2007 4
It is also part of Islamic Culture (an oxymoron if there ever was one) to engage in falsehoods. We have seen this rolloercoaster tactic in negotiation before.
I say we snag the two top Taliban representatives sitting at the negotiation table, slice off their heads and throw a parade.
1:28 am on August 12th, 2007 5
Now THAT wouldn’t be Politically Correct. I LIKE IT!
6:33 pm on August 31st, 2007 6
[...] undercuts their policy by holding direct negotiations with the Taliban and meeting their demands, paying a prior $2 million dollar ransom, along with likely more ransom money being laundered through the [...]