It still is not entirely clear why or by whom they were kidnaped. But it appears most likely the Taliban were behind the three-day abduction with the goal of stopping construction of a highway linking the area to Iran.
A number of Afghan officials have said the kidnapers were Taliban militants. Iranian officials, on the other hand, have been very insistent that the Taliban were not involved.
The kidnaped men were working on a highway in Farah province that would link the provincial capital to the Iranian border.
Radio Farda reported that one of its Afghan reporters caught up with one of the freed Iranian engineers as he was boarding a bus to return to Iran. Radio Farda quoted him as saying his crew was working along the highway when a group of men came up and seized them. “They told us they were Taliban,” he said. “They didn’t treat us poorly and shared whatever food they could get from villagers. They wanted us to stop building the road. They said it shouldn’t be built here.”
A local police officer told Radio Farda that because the highway would connect the provincial capital to Iran, it goes against the interests of the “enemies of the Afghan people.”
In Tehran, Deputy Fatameh Alia of the Majlis National Security Committee told state television that Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar had reported the Taliban had nothing to do with the kidnaping. She said the minister reported that the mayor of the town where the Iranian construction team was building the highway opposed the road and ordered a band of locals to kidnap the Iranians and take them far away. She didn’t explain why a mayor would oppose a highway to his city.
Farah province spokesman Naqibullah Farahi told Iran’s Mehr news agency that the kidnapers were Taliban.
And the Afghan police commander in Farah province, Major General Sayed Mohammad Roshandel, told the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) the Taliban were behind the kidnaping.
He said three Iranian engineers, 10 Iranian workmen and two Afghan workers were seized at the construction site last Sunday and freed three days later after negotiations.
He said they were freed without payment of any ransom. He said the release was negotiated by “local elders.”
But AIP said another source told it the Iranian consul general in Herat held face-to-face talks with the kidnapers and negotiated the release. That source said it wasn’t clear how the consul general arranged the release and whether any payment was involved.
In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast gave full credit for the release to the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the Iranian embassy in Kabul. He gave no credit to the Afghan government. And he said nothing about any conditions or ransom payments to gain the release.
Taliban spokesman Yusuf Ahmadi told Agence France Presse by telephone that the insurgent group had no knowledge of the kidnaping. But the Taliban is a diffuse organization and the national leadership may not have known what a local band was doing. On the other hand, kidnapings for ransom by local criminal bands are not uncommon in Afghanistan.
In Kabul, the Iranian embassy put out a statement charging that unnamed “foreigners” had a hand in the abduction. The Iranian government in Tehran did not try to market that line, however.
The kidnaped men all worked for the Nassar Jahad Tehran Construction Co. building a highway 125 kilometers long from the Iranian border to the town of Farah.
The AIP and other news agencies have reported that all construction work ended when the men were kidnaped, giving some credence to the assertion that the goal of the kidnaping was to block the road construction.
The provincial office of the Public Works Ministry said work on the highway began about two years ago and is now about half complete. No one said whether work would now resume.