SHIBERGHAN (Pajhwok): Taliban militants on Wednesday kidnapped dozens of local residents in the Darzab district of northern Jawzjan province, officials said.
The governor’s spokesman, Mohammad Reza Ghafori, said the men belonging to Chaharsai and Chehel Tapa areas of the district were busy irrigating their farmlands when they were kidnapped by the rebels in the morning.
He said initial information suggested the farmers were taken hostage by gunmen loyal to a Taliban’s shadow governor Mullah Mohammad Mansoor.
The motive behind the hostage-taking was not immediately known, but a number of local elders had approached the Taliban to negotiate their release, Ghafori added.
However, Sakhidad, a resident of Chehelmard village, said, “I think the incident is linked to a dispute over the ownership of a land plot between Pashtun and Uzbek tribes. A Pashtun tribesman was recently killed in the feud.”
After the murder, the resident said, the dispute was resolved and the slain person’s family was given 1.4 million afghanis in compensation.
But a number of people from the victim’s tribe came to the village and constructed residential buildings and also complained to the Taliban about the murder, he said.
“Therefore, the Taliban took 52 people hostage from Chehelmard village, all the hostages are related to Nasim Mahdi, a senior Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) leader in the area,” he said.
Sakhidad said there was no information about where the people kidnapped had been taken, but local elders had intervened to find a solution.
However, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the men were taken to a Taliban court for solving the land ownership dispute.
He said the men would be released once the case was decided. “These persons violated the Taliban order and irrigated the land despite being restricted,” he said.
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