U.S.: American Soldier Captured in Afghanistan

Washington Post:

U.S.: American Soldier Captured in Afghanistan

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 2, 2009 9:33 AM

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2 -- A U.S. soldier missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan since Tuesday is believed to have been captured by Taliban militants, the military said Thursday.

In a statement issued from U.S. military headquarters in Kabul, officials said "we are exhausting all available resources to ascertain his whereabouts and provide for his safe return."

The soldier was not part of the large-scale assault launched on Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan early Thursday. That operation, which involves about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, was encountering only light resistance, officials said. But the military expects the Taliban to respond more harshly once troops move into towns and began patrols.

Military officials in Afghanistan, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation, said the missing soldier appears to have walked off his base into an unsecured area.

A U.S. official in Afghanistan said the soldier's absence was discovered when he did not show up for morning formation. It is highly unusual for a U.S. soldier to leave a military base unaccompanied by other American troops.

Agence-France Press reported that a commander of the Taliban's hard-line Haqqani faction claimed Thursday that his militia had captured the soldier in the Yousuf Khail district of Paktika province. The area is along the porous border with Pakistan. That report could not be independently confirmed.

"Our leaders have not decided on the fate of this soldier." the AFP quoted the Haqqani commander, identified only as Bahram, as saying. "They will decide on his fate and soon we will present video tapes of the coalition soldier and our demand to media."

While the AFP report quoted the Haqqani commander as saying that the soldier was captured with three Afghan "guards," the U.S. official said the Afghanis who reportedly were seized do not appear to have been soldiers.

The Haqqani network, believed to control large swaths of eastern Afghanistan, has emerged in recent years as a powerful antagonist to U.S. efforts to stabilize that country and root out insurgent havens in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. The network is controlled by insurgent leader Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Sirajuddin Haqqani, and is suspected of launching a number of spectacular attacks in recent years, including a deadly suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed more than 50 people in July 2008.

New York Times reporter David Rohde was traveling to meet a commander with the group when he was kidnapped last November. Rohde escaped his captors two weeks ago. While he was being held, The Washington Post and other media organizations refrained from reporting about his capture at the request of the Times and Rohde's relatives, who feared that publication of the news could endanger his life.

U.S. officials declined Thursday to provide additional information about the missing soldier, saying that doing do could place him in further jeopardy.