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Foreigners Among as Many as 11 Civilians Feared Abducted by Taliban Taliban Abduct 11 Civilians From Downed Helicopter
(about 11 hours later)
KABUL — A civilian helicopter made a forced landing because of bad weather in an insurgent-held area of eastern Afghanistan late Sunday and the three crew members and their passengers may have been abducted, said local officials and the helicopter company that operated the aircraft. KABUL, Afghanistan — An emergency landing by a helicopter ferrying foreign engineers in eastern Afghanistan turned into a mass abduction by the Taliban, officials said on Monday, offering a stark reminder of the insurgents’ continuing hold on large parts of the countryside.
The aircraft landed in Azra district of Logar Province, a vast and thinly populated mountainous area in the far east of the province that has little government presence. The aircraft was forced down late Sunday because of a storm, according to the Afghan transport company that operated it, and it had to land in an area of Logar Province, Mangal Khel, that is almost entirely controlled by the Taliban. Although Logar borders Kabul and has a large and mostly American base near the province’s capital, it also has a vast mountainous stretch that has become an insurgent haven, local officials said.
Din Mohammed Darwish, the spokesman for the Logar provincial governor’s office said that the Mangal Khel area where the helicopter landed “is heavily controlled by the Taliban.” In all, 11 people were abducted, according to reports from the Turkish foreign ministry and Afghan government officials. They included eight Turkish engineers, one Afghan man and the two pilots of the Russian-made helicopter. One pilot was confirmed to be Russian, and the other was either Russian or perhaps Kyrgyz, said a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Kabul.
He added that the provincial governor’s office had intelligence from locals that there may have been as many as 11 people on board — seven Turkish engineers and an Afghan translator as well as the crew. Other reports from Turkish news agencies suggested that some of the passengers were not Turks but from other countries. “It’s a lot of people to take hostage — a lot of civilians,” said a senior Western official here, speaking on condition of anonymity “It gives the Taliban bargaining chips, no question about that.”
Mr. Yama Farooq, the director of administration for Khorasan Cargo Airlines, confirmed that the helicopter, crew and passengers were missing. In addition to the crew of two pilots and a flight engineer, he said there were passengers aboard, but he was not sure how many. Afghan officials, one of whom described the abductions as “very terrible” said they are worried that the hostages might be taken to Pakistan, where many international terrorist groups are based. The area where the helicopter landed is less than 20 miles from the Pakistani border.
The helicopter took off from Khost Province in the late afternoon on Sunday and was bound for Kabul when the bad weather forced it to land, he said. There were violent rainstorms late in the afternoon in Kabul and surrounding areas. Logar, where the helicopter was forced to land, lies just south of Kabul. Khorasan Cargo is an Afghan company with offices in Kabul, the United Arab Emirates and Kyrgyzstan, according to its Web site. Its pilots are mostly from Central Asian countries and the company operates Russian-made helicopters, the Web site says. “This is our concern that can easily transfer them to Pakistan," said a senior Afghan official. The official added that as of Monday night the Afghan government was unsure where the hostages were being held and whether they were still in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, Capt. Luca Carniel, confirmed that a civilian helicopter had made a forced landing in eastern Afghanistan and that ISAF was helping with its recovery, but said he did not have information on the number of people aboard or their nationalities. The Taliban took credit for the abduction, sending out a carefully worded press statement on Monday afternoon that used restrained language so that it sounded similar to Western press statements, including a headline and a dateline, even though some of the information was wrong, according to Afghan and American officials. The headline read: “US-NATO Chopper falls into hands of Mujahedeen, all passengers detained”
The Taliban statement claimed that those captured worked for the military, however they routinely make false claims and there was no indication that any of those captured were either military contractors or troops.
The Turkish government reached out to Afghan tribal leaders to see if they could mediate with the insurgents, and deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc went on national television Monday night to underscore the government’s efforts to get back its citizens. He noted that they were not abducted for any particular reason: In many cases the Taliban say that they are carrying out a kidnapping or killing because the person is working with the international coalition or with the Afghan government, but the militants did not note that in this case.
The kidnapping has put Turkey, which has carved a niche for itself in running crisis diplomacy between the West and the Muslim world, in the unusual position of needing emergency mediation itself. The semi-official Anatolia news agency said the government had reached out to local Afghan officials, including the chairman of the Logar Province provincial council.
“The Foreign Ministry is involved in a serious follow-up, and we hope that our citizens will be freed soon and return to their work locations in safety,” he said.
For Russia, it was a rare incident of an ugly tangle with the Taliban. After the departure of the former Soviet Union troops from the country in 1989 after a brutal 10-year war, the Russians generally kept their distance from Afghanistan. When Russia began to rebuild its Afghan ties shortly after the fall of the Taliban, it kept a concertedly low profile, concentrating on civilian and development projects that mostly kept its citizens out of harm’s way.
The Russian Embassy in Kabul had no comment on the abduction Monday, apparently deciding that a low profile might be more helpful than anything else as negotiations go forward.

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul.