Kidnapped in Nimroz

The kidnapping of Maniappan Ramankutty, an Indian driver with Border Roads Organisation, in the southern province of Nimroz, takes me way ba...

The kidnapping of Maniappan Ramankutty, an Indian driver with Border Roads Organisation, in the southern province of Nimroz, takes me way back to 8217;80s when the mujahideen, then resisting the Soviets, kidnapped an Indian scribe attached to a foreign newspaper on the road from Kabul to Kandahar.

It took me a tension-filled 72 hours to get him released safely through some of my contacts in the Afghan capital and Kandahar. Tony Mascarenus of the Sunday Times and Mark Tully, were among the host of journalists filing from the region then. They operated from the suburbs of Kabul and rarely ventured out since it was well known that foreigners were being targeted. World wide publicity, ransom and an enhanced standing within the tribal warlord fraternity, were reason enough to pick up a soft target.

Once again today the situation is not reassuring for foreign nationals in war-torn Afghanistan. The Taliban and others have over the past years picked up Turkish and Indian engineers working on roadways; a Briton was abducted and killed in the Farah province this year; and now we have an Indian being targeted. Besides the Taliban, which always had a strong base in the Kandahar region, there have now sprung up many local chiefs who take no orders from either the governor of Kandahar or the distant Karzai government.

One major policy lapse that will cost any Afghan government dearly is the lack of an effective and sizeable Afghan army and police force. The trouble in Afghanistan today is that all kinds of unruly elements are so heavily armed that the Afghan police8212;the sarandoy8212;are unable to deal with them.

In the Kutty case, we need to move fast. We have a consul-general in Kandahar, and he should be able to confirm whether it is the Taliban or some other group that is behind the kidnapping. If it is the former, then the negotiations will tend to be lengthy and tedious. Any road construction project in southern and western Afghanistan will necessarily require its own in-built security system. The situation for the 300 Indian workers in the Afghan countryside, working in sectors like health, education, power generation, road construction, and the like, is dangerous, and it is time to instal a fail-proof security system to ensure their safety and to take care of emergent situations like the present one.

The onus for resolving the current crisis should be on our missions in Kabul and Kandahar, and not so much on the MEA or home ministry. The immediate need of the hour is to first identify those who have done the kidnapping, and then the India Mission, with or without the assistance of the Afghan government, should try and make direct contact with the kidnappers and seek the terms of Ramankutty8217;s safe return. In such cases it is often back door negotiations that work 8212; not so much diplomatic stances and demarches.

The writer was a military attache in Kabul in the 8217;80s