We will behead him," threatens a 25-year-old, self-proclaimed Taliban, as day-long negotiations on the fate of a shopkeeper abducted five days ago reach a critical point. Four worried-looking male relatives of captured Abdul Ahmad sit with their backs against the wall in a house of a low-level Taliban commander in a part of Wardak province where the militants are in control, not the government.
There is no way these humble men, who have arrived from the town of Ghazni just a few dozen kilometres (miles) away, can meet the ransom demand of 12 PK machine guns and ammunition or the equivalent in cash - roughly 1.4 million Pakistani rupees (17,000 dollars), the preferred currency here. One resignedly repeats an Afghan expression: "If a whole city costs one rupee and you don't have it, you can't buy it."
Hafiz, the young Taliban who wears a scarf wrapped into a turban, gets angry. "We will kill him," he fumes, adding that the shopkeeper's head will be delivered the following day. Again, the relatives explain that 35-year-old Ahmad is not with the government despite the documents found on him when he was pulled from a taxi travelling from Kabul to Ghazni.
The rebels are not worried about an English-language proposal to supply a Polish-run military reconstruction team with solar power - they cannot read it. Ahmad was only delivering it for someone else anyway. It is a Dari-language list of food items that the shopkeeper has been contracted to supply to the provincial police headquarters in Ghazni that they say proves he works for the government.
The road on which he was captured - which continues on to the southern city of Kandahar - is one of the most dangerous in Afghanistan, where travellers are preyed on by Taliban and bandits, sometimes kidnapped, sometimes killed. There is also a risk of bombings or shoot-outs between security forces and rebels. But it is a key artery and most Afghans have no choice except to take the chance.
Ahmad's relatives are by now sure they will be taking home a dead body. "We will stay for the night but will not eat until our problem is solved," says one, hoping this affront to Afghan culture will influence the negotiation process.
Indeed it prompts the low-level commander in whose home they sit to call in a more senior Taliban, who arrives shortly and gives his name as Mullah Zabihullah from the southern province of Helmand.
Talks begin afresh, with the relatives taken outside one by one for private discussions. Around midnight Ghulam Abbas, Ahmad's oldest brother, returns, his face relieved: an agreement has been reached. "We will leave now and by first light we will return with our part of the arrangement," the 62-year-old says.
Mullah Zabihullah explains later that the agreed price was six machine guns and some ammunition - which really means the equivalent in cash - and "a promise he will not work with the government again". It is still hours before dawn but the prisoner has to be fetched.
A group of armed men in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, seized from a supply convoys ambushed on the Kabul-Kandahar road, leave on a zig-zag route into some hills and a small village of mudbrick houses. They walk into a small mosque and through to a room and inspect three men lying on mattresses. Ahmad had been kept here but has been moved. They drive to a small house just minutes away. One is about to shoot open the door but is persuaded to wait until it is unlocked.
The men push their way in and head for a small room. There lies Ahmad, frightened and dishevelled, his legs in chains and three armed men keeping guard. He is bewildered, unaware there had even been talks for his release, and he tries to please his captors with jokes, uncertain if he is really to be freed. By daylight, the ransom has been paid and Ahmad has his hat, watch and a wad of documents returned.
Squeezed into a taxi with the relatives who saved his life, his beaten and tired face shows his relief at being able to return home. In a vehicle nearby is another man, younger than the shopkeeper, weeping, calling to God, and fingering prayer beads as he sits between two Taliban - another victim from the highway.
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