According to Taliban spokesperson Ahmadi, the Korean government has not pulled out all of the Korean NGOs from Afghanistan by the end of August as per the agreement that resulted in the release of the 19 Korean hostages. In retaliation, he has threatened to attack Korean targets in Afghanistan, including the Korean embassy in Kabul.
Why am I not surprised.
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Whatever. This is not exactly an earth-shattering revelation. In fact, it’s almost a non-story. It just proves again that the Taliban have some media savvy. It doesn’t change any of the facts of what has gone on.
We can’t have it both ways. On the one hand, people excoriate the Roh gang for bending over for the Taliban. Now apparently we’re blaming them for failure to bend over for the Taliban. All I can hope is that the reason Seoul is reneging on their word is that a regiment of special forces is being dispatched to Ghazni Province to hunt down the kidnappers.
Wow, negotiate with someone even less trustworthy than the little Elvis and the Taliban turns around right away and reneges on the deal. What a surprise! Time to send in 5,000 ROK marines to avenge the murders of two of the hostages by killing as many Talibani’s as possible. Of course they won’t do that, any more than they make not a peep when KJI blatantly cons them out of their deliveries of extortion money to the North. Koreans are generally good negotiators, making the actions of this government particularly embarrassing. They’ve been played for fools by KJI and now the Taliban.
Does anyone know how good the Korean special forces really are? I have no idea, but imagine at least someone on this blog will be able to offer an educated guess.
The reason I ask is because if the Korean military felt it didn’t have any people up to the task, the government would have been and would still be limited in what it could do.
Before we wonder about if anyone will be sent, I’d like to know if there is actually anyone to send at all.
(I really hope that they have a large group of highly trained people on a plane right now headed to Ghazni Province.)
Korean targets are rich targets. Why wouldn’t they make up some excuse to get more of them?
Maybe their pissed because the check(cheque) bounced!
What’s a Korean Target?
Shoot at people driving Hyundai’s,
burn down the local PC Bang,
throw a granade at a Norebang.
Korean targets in Afghanistan? What Korean targets.
They need to go the the Phillipines, Korean targets a plenty.
Hey Mustafa, let’s suicide bomb a Kimchi factory.
Tsk, Tsk….
What’s the world coming to when terrorists don’t keep their word?
You know, I thought there was a law that people can’t hijack planes and fly them into buildings.
Why didn’t someone send a memo to the Taliban? How did they miss it?
Bring the SF that were dispatched to Kwangju in 1980 out of retirement, give them lots of drugs, deprive them of food and let them loose in Ghanzi Province.
There’s a good chance that NATO, US or Afghan forces are/will be taking care of these particular Taliban members in Ghazni. (Korean special forces would be a nice touch for some raids or sniping, but aren’t going to impact on the outcome of the conflict.) The Taliban have been under a lot of military pressure and are taking very heavy casualties, many of them in this region. In the early stages of the hostage taking, the Afghans claimed to know who the kidnappers’ families were, and other details. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those responsible were already being taken out, especially seeing as they’re aren’t any hostage casualties to worry about.
But that’s not going to keep the Korea haters from trying.
“All I can hope is that the reason Seoul is reneging on their word is that a regiment of special forces is being dispatched to Ghazni Province to hunt down the kidnappers.”
They are reneging because that is what Koreans do! I thought you knew that.
Reneging is what the NBA does. Koreans re-negotiate.
I said it before, I’ll say it again…a deal made under this kind of duress is NOT a deal and personally, I think the Korean government needs to grow a pair and renege BIG time on the deal and send combat troops…maybe they could find that briefcase full of money before it gets used to buy something really dangerous.
For more suggestions along the same line read comments on my blog.
I agree, this is a non-story. The Taliban knew there was no way South Korea could pull out all the civilians out of Afghanistan in less than a week, not that it could force the civilians to get out if it wanted…they’d have to find them first.
yeah, the Taliban knew it was making a deal that would be broken regardless of whether Korea was able to meet the terms or not.
the only idiots in this equation are (still) the Koreans who apparently were under the impression that negotiating a deal (like that) with terrorists was somehow going to exempt only Koreans worldwide from being kidnapped, raped, tortured, extorted, murdered, assaulted, bombed, blown up, etc.
all the government really accomplished was bring home an ignorant and self righteous group of citizens that the rest of the country probably could have done without and hung giant fucking signs around the necks of ALL Koreans that say:
“Hi! Do you know Korea? It is a small but very rich country! My family/Church has money! If you kidnap me, you can be rich too! Have you tried Kimchi?”
it’s difficult at this moment in history to read Koreans as anything but extremely naive. add a government willing to strike deals and/or payout …
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[...] which were supposed to be withdrawn from the country by the end of August. They will proceed to target South Koreans in Afghanistan in retaliation and have put the South Korean embassy in Kabul on their list of places to blow up. Boy, negotiating [...]