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Abducted Indian engineers were freed in exchange for Taliban members: UN report
It is believed the three Indians were part of a group of seven engineers kidnapped from Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province in May 2018.
Three Indian engineers kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2018 were freed last year by the Taliban in exchange for 11 members of the militant group, including a commander sanctioned by the United States, according to a UN report.
The report, from the UN Security Council’s analytical support and sanctions monitoring team, said that in October 2019, “11 Taliban were released from Bagram Airfield detention facility in exchange for three Indian engineers who had been kidnapped in Afghanistan”.
The Taliban members who were released “included former shadow governors Sheikh Abdul Rahim…and Mawlawi Rashid Baluch,” the report said.
Rahim is believed to have been appointed by the Haqqani Network, which is perceived as close to the Pakistani security establishment. Baluch was sanctioned in 2015 by the US treasury department, which emphasised his role in “the Taliban and Al-Qaida nexus”, the report added.
It is believed the three Indians were part of a group of seven engineers kidnapped from Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province in May 2018. One of the men was freed in March last year and the fate of the others remains unknown.
The engineers were working on power projects run by the Afghan government when they were kidnapped.
At the time of the release of the three engineers last year, the Indian government had declined to provide details about how they were freed.
The UN report, issued late last month, had focused on the close links between the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda and the presence of a large number of foreign fighters in Afghanistan, including some 6,500 Pakistani terrorists. The Pakistani fighters include members of the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
