Taliban Say They Killed 4 Afghan Interpreters

[Robb]

Source: NYT

KABUL, Afghanistan — A Taliban spokesman boasted on Saturday that the group had kidnapped and killed four Afghan interpreters, one on his wedding day, apparently because they worked for the United States military and a Western contractor.

The spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by cellphone, confirmed accounts by villagers in Khost Province that the Taliban had kidnapped six members of a wedding party when they went to the Afghan-Pakistani border to escort the bride to the ceremony; she had been living in Pakistan. Mr. Mujahid said the Taliban found the four interpreters guilty of working as informers for “foreign forces” and executed them on Friday; the Taliban released the other two, he said.

General Nawab, an Afghan Army commander and the director of the Joint Coordination Center in Khost and who like many Afghans uses only one name, said the Taliban had killed the four men after abducting them from the wedding procession on Thursday night and taking them to Pakistan. Their bodies were found the next morning in the Spina Palla region, back on the Afghan side of the border.

Local villagers in the Alisher District of Khost Province identified the bodies and said that one of the dead, Lal Badshah, who worked as an interpreter at the coalition’s Forward Operating Base Salerno, was the groom. Two others, including Mr. Badshah’s brother, Yaqoot Shah, worked for the United States military, while the fourth victim worked for a construction company in Kabul.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/world/asia/16kabul.html

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Classy.

[truthisfreedom]

1. Bad news for the right wing taliband.

[NJmaverick]

2. It would be a crime to let those monsters take over Afghanistan

[Flaneur]

7. Yes. We prefer that killings be done neatly with remote controlled drones.

[Arctic Dave]

3. Seems about right. Work for the other side, you die.

[Robb]

4. Fair point. nt

[Drops_not_Dope]

5. David Swanson and his piece

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8340200

McChrystal: Beheadings of Our Allies Simply to Be Expected

[Flaneur]

6. 1. Don't hire yourself out to the foreign occupier.

[StercusAccidit]

8. The Taliban

The Taliban aren't at bunch of patriotic rebels fighting valiantly against evil occupiers of their country. Its like a German siding with the Nazis in WW2.

[Alamuti Lotus]

9. I am certainly shocked that collaborators with a foreign occupation force would be struck

It could be said that at least the wedding party itself wasn't bombed from a few miles in the air, as is the proclivity of the occupation force.

[Robb]

11. It may not fit with your simplistic narrative

And you may feel clever as you continue with your "occupying forces" rants, oblivious or willfully ignoring the Taliban's history of being as much a foreign creation as an indigenous one.

But the fact remains: the http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2009/0806/afghan-bomb-kills-21-wedding-guests-taliban-breaking-promise">Taliban has http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62A2FP20100313">killed more people at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/23/suicide-bomb-pakistan">weddings than NATO has.

[elias49]

12. You're keeping score? nt

[daleo]

10. Interpreting for a foreign army is a risky business

I imagine they were favored targets since the dawn of time.