A young Canadian traveller who reportedly visited one of the most perilous corners of Afghanistan to learn Pashto, the native tongue of the Taliban, has gone missing, with the insurgents claiming they have captured a Canadian“secret agent” by the same name.
Colin Rutherford disappeared while visiting Afghanistan as a tourist, the Foreign Affairs Department said Sunday in a terse statement that suggested he was, indeed, in captivity. If so, he would be the latest of a handful of Canadians kidnapped in the tumultuous region in the last few years.
One version of the insurgents’ communiqué, translated by the SITE Intelligence Group, said that they planned to release a video of the hostage soon, and had already made unspecified demands for his release to the Canadian government.
“Canadian officials are working with Afghan authorities to assist the family in securing the safe release of their loved one,” said Emmanuelle Lamoureux, a Foreign Affairs spokeswoman in an emailed response to questions Sunday.
When asked about the claims he was spying, another department official, Claude Rochon, said later only that Mr. Rutherford was in the country to learn Pashto. It is the most common of Afghanistan’s two officials languages, spoken by the Pashtun people, who mainly populate its southern half.
A woman who answered the phone at a home belonging to a family member of the missing man offered a polite“no comment” when asked about Mr. Rutherford.
The government confirmation came several hours after a Taliban website issued a brief statement saying that it had captured a Canadian in Ghazni city, capital of the Afghan province of the same name. The insurgents named him as“Mackenzie Rutherford Colin” of Toronto.
“He has been involved in some clandestine activities to get some fugitive information, especially to learn about the whereabouts of the Mujahideen, according to the admission of the suspect,” said an English statement on the website of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” as the Taliban call the country. “Mujahideen gotten some documents out of the suspect describing him as a secrete agent.”
In a Pashtun version translated by SITE, a Washington, D.C.-area security research organization, the Taliban say that during an interrogation of Mr. Rutherford,“it has been discovered that he was dispatched to Ghazni city to gather intelligence on hideouts of the mujahideen.”
The captors have been in contact with Canadian officials“but so far no positive reply has been received from it about the demands for (Mr. Rutherford’s) release.”
The“Islamic Emirate” website, which uses the word mujahideen, or holy warrior, to refer to Taliban fighters, typically features exaggerated portrayals of the insurgents’ military exploits, mixed with propaganda promoting its side in the conflict.
Few parts of Afghanistan are particularly safe, as the insurgents spread violence ever wider, but Ghazni is considered particularly dangerous, with the Taliban holding effective control over large parts of the province.
Foreign Affairs officials reminded Canadians Sunday that it strongly recommends against travel in the country at all. Its website says the security situation“remains extremely volatile and unpredictable.”
A Facebook page and one on the Wayn social-networking site for a Colin Rutherford from Toronto indicate that he is 26, of mixed,“Eurasian” background, and has travelled extensively in the region, with trips to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, in 2009 — described as his “Islamabad grad trip”— and Kabul from October to November of 2010.
In a testimonial for an Islamabad guest house posted online by the hotel, the same Colin Rutherford mentions he spoke some Urdu— the majority language of Pakistan — but suggested he was less adventurous socially than in his travel habits.
“Naturally, as a shy person, I didn’t intend to meet anyone, but the atmosphere was so welcoming at the entrance (to the guest house) that I met quite a few and befriended some NGO workers ... who took me up to Kashmir to visit,” he says.
Kidnappings of foreigners and Afghans, both for political reasons and pure financial gain, have become common in the last few years, and Canadians have not been spared.
In 2008, Melissa Fung, a CBC TV reporter, was taken from a refugee camp north of Kabul and held captive for a month by profit-oriented kidnappers, before being released unharmed. In Pakistan near the Afghan border that same year, Beverley Giesbrecht of B.C. was abducted by a group affiliated with the Taliban. An Indian newspaper reported in November that she had died in captivity.
- With files from Stewart Bell
