Special Advisory

The release of the surviving 19 South Korean hostages held by the Taliban in Afghanistan since July 19, 2007 carries very real increased risk to missionaries and faithbased workers.  1. The South Korean government made an agreement with the Taliban to ban future missionary activity in Afghanistan, a watershed event that had been resisted in prior hostage negotiations for kidnapped Christians.  2. The Taliban, now an insurgency (or, at best, a non-state actor) rather than an incumbent government, was able to elevate itself by directly engaging a state (South Korea) in negotiations.

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