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Government official kidnapped, freed

ISLAMABAD: Taliban militants abducted a senior government official of Swat on Sunday, increasing concerns about a controversial government effort to restore peace in the North-West Frontier Province district.

Kushal Khan, the newly appointed district coordination officer, was driving to the Swat valley’s main city Mingora accompanied by six bodyguards when he was kidnapped, police officials said.

The incident came in the midst of reports that the Taliban is having internal discussions about the possibility and terms of a ceasefire in Swat Valley.

A spokesman of the Swat Taliban told journalists that the official was their “guest”, and they had only taken him away for a cup of tea. He has since been released. But until late in the evening, Mr. Khan’s whereabouts, and those of his guards, remained unknown.

This is the second untoward incident in Swat valley since the NWFP government, an ally of President Asif Ali Zardari, agreed to set up Islamic courts that would ensure speedy justice in the region, hoping to buy peace from the Taliban in return.

Earlier in the week, Musa Khankhel, a journalist working for Geo TV, was killed on the job, as he was reporting on the controversial new effort by the government.

The abduction of the district official came a day after the leader of the Swat Taliban, Mullah Fazlullah, announced on his illegal radio that he would review a 10-day ceasefire with the government when it ends on Wednesday.

A top government official, Syed Mohammed Jawad, the commissioner of Malakand division, which includes seven districts including Swat, had earlier said the Taliban had agreed to a “permanent” ceasefire.

He asked people to return and declared that schools that the Taliban had ordered closed would reopen on Monday.

But it appears that the Taliban is still discussing the terms of a possible ceasefire with the government’s intermediary Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the leader of a related hardline Islamist group called the Tehreek-e-Nifas-e-Sharia Mohammadi.

It is with the TNSM that the NWFP has concluded the agreement to set up the Nizam-e-Adl courts, and he has undertaken to persuade Mullah Fazlullah to restore peace in Swat.

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