Christian aid worker back in Kabul
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After Sept. 11, of course, there wasn't going to be a trial. The attorney for Shelter Now, a 26-year-old sharia law expert from Pakistan, made repeated trips to Kabul with reams of documents showing that proselytizing isn't a crime under Islamic law. The Taliban Supreme Court justices never met him.
As the American air war began Oct. 7, the Taliban shifted the aid workers from prison to prison, eventually dumping them in the Riasat-e Say, the feared interrogation center of the Afghan intelligence agency, KhAD. Finally, the second week of November, the bombing stopped and the Taliban prepared to abandon Kabul. Taubmann and the aid workers were pulled out of their cells and forced into a van. They joined hundreds of other trucks and cars, packed with Al Qaeda and Taliban soldiers, all retreating to Kandahar.
The convoy reached Ghazni at 10pm, and the eight aid workers were placed in a jail in Ghazni, while their Taliban captors rushed off to meet their families. An hour later, the aid workers heard gunfire and the sound of Taliban fleeing to their cars. Ghazni was in revolt; the aid workers had been left behind.
But their rescue was not immediate. The commander who led the rout of Ghazni, Ismail Khan, at first seemed eager to help the aid workers escape. Then he discouraged the aid workers from contacting American soldiers to organize a rescue attempt. Later, commanders under Mr. Khan admitted to a Monitor reporter that they were trying to ransom the aid workers for $100,000.
Using a satellite phone, Taubmann and the aid workers managed to contact the Americans and to arrange a rendezvous at an airfield in Ghazni. The aid workers burned their own clothes to attract the American helicopters.
"The helicopters left, and we couldn't see them anymore; I thought we were finished," Taubmann recalls. "But then, suddenly out of the dark, there were these people who looked like they were from outer space. They had funny helmets, antennaes, funny guns that you never saw before, night-vision goggles. We had to tell them not to shoot the Afghans around us, they were our friends."
Even though he has told this story of his rescue hundreds of times, and written a book about his experiences in prison, the most lasting impression for Taubmann of his incarceration was what he views as the constant protection of God. None of the eight foreign aid workers and none of the 16 Afghan aid workers of Shelter Now were seriously injured, either by Taliban guards or US bombs. Even today, he says, he holds no bitterness toward the Taliban themselves, many of whom he regarded as friends. Indeed, some Taliban guards have shaved their beards and come to Shelter Now, looking for jobs.
The key, Taubmann says, is that the foreign-aid community must move quickly to rebuild Afghanistan, before the post-Taliban euphoria turns into frustration.
"This is the last chance for Afghanistan. The interest is there from different governments to help the Afghan people. The peacekeepers are here.
"Now we need people to rebuild roads, to rebuild homes before the winter. It will not change overnight; it will take years. But if we don't do it now, there will be a backlash. And we cannot allow that to happen."
