Related articles and links |  1 of 3

The Taliban's arrest of eight Shelter Now aid workers in Afghanistan on charges of illegally spreading Christianity was politically motivated and linked to the regime's terrorist activities. That's the view of one of the eight, Georg Taubmann, head of the German relief and development agency.

"We were human shields," Taubmann says. "I make a very strong statement. The safest place in Kabul was the prison we were in. The Taliban knew it." He says Taliban officials often visited the prison, even spending the night "because they knew they would never be attacked there."

Christianity Today interviewed Taubmann in late December about Shelter Now's work in Afghanistan.

The Taliban arrested Taubmann, Americans Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, and five other Western development workers on August 3. Sixteen Afghan Shelter Now workers were arrested along with the eight Westerners. American special forces rescued the eight Westerners in the city of Ghazni in November.

Taubmann, a former church youth-group leader, has been stung by criticism that Shelter Now, a secular agency run by Christians, operated unethically and endangered the work of other Christians in Afghanistan. International Assistance Mission, a consortium of agencies, was booted out in late August.

Curry, 30, and Mercer, 24, were arrested after showing a digital version of the Jesus film to an Afghan family. "We do not know how [the police] found out about it," says Taubmann, adding that he personally never showed the film to Afghans in Afghanistan.

The family had repeatedly asked to see the film. Two men in the family were detained for two days and then released, Mercer said in a news conference. No other family members were arrested, fueling the suspicions of Shelter Now workers that they were set up.

"I don't exactly know in detail what [Mercer and Curry] did," Taubmann says, adding that Shelter Now workers were always "very, very careful." Curry and Mercer were unavailable for comment.

An influential ministry leader, who works in the region and asked not to be named, says Shelter Now was "the easiest target" for the Taliban. The leader says some diplomats were convinced the Taliban wanted foreigners out of the country as terrorist training increased.

"[The Taliban] must've laid a trap," the leader says. "The Taliban, knowing the group was not as strict in terms of visiting Afghan families as some others, just set it up so that so that they would go and visit this family, and [authorities] caught them as they were coming out."

Taubmann says that a Taliban law mandated expulsion, not arrest and trial, for foreigners suspected of proselytism.

Shelter Now workers did not offer any financial inducement for religious conversion, he says.

Most of the printed material that Taliban officials presented as evidence against the eight (CT, Oct. 1, 2001, p. 26) did not belong to Shelter Now workers and was apparently gathered from other sources, Taubmann says.

The Taliban never produced the hundreds of Bibles and videotapes it claimed the group was planning to distribute. Taubmann says some materials, including the Bible, were in English, which undermines the charge of proselytism. The Bible is not banned in Afghanistan.

The Taliban looted and destroyed Shelter Now's factories the day after the arrests, Taubmann says. Through intermediaries, the Islamist leaders hinted that they might release the eight if the United States would not attack Afghanistan after September 11.

On Christmas Day, the new government of Afghanistan invited Shelter Now to return and resume its relief work.

next page... |  1 of 3

February 4 2002, Vol. 46, No. 2