Fate of US aid worker a mystery two months on, say officials
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) — Mystery surrounds the fate of a US aid worker who was kidnapped with her Afghan driver two months as there has been no word from their captors, officials said.
Cyd Mizell, 50, and her driver Abdul Hadi were snatched on January 26 while driving to work at the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation (ARDLF), a small nongovernment group that works with poor communities in Asia.
ARDLF said in a statement a month later that it had received "information over the past few days indicating that our two aid workers have been killed."
This was, however, never confirmed and an ARDLF employee in southern Kandahar city, where they were taken, said Tuesday that they were just "rumours".
"The case is still open," a US official said Tuesday.
The kidnappers never contacted authorities, said Assadullah Khalid, the governor of the volatile southern province of Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban movement waging a deadly insurgency that has included kidnappings.
"No conditions were set," he told AFP.
The Taliban have repeatedly denied involvement, with spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed saying again Tuesday: "Our military friends have not abducted the American woman."
Mizell was wearing a burqa, an all-covering garment worn by women in rural Afghanistan, when she went missing.
She speaks the local Pashtu language and had been teaching English, sewing and embroidery to women -- some of whom joined a protest days after her disappearance to demand her release.
But Khalid said she had not taken sufficient security for a foreign national in this volatile part of Afghanistan, where crime combines with insurgency to create a precarious environment.
"She was not careful at all," he told AFP. "She lived alone in her house, didn't accept any security. She didn't even live inside the city."
The police have not been able to find out what happened.
"I don't think she is somewhere near Kandahar city," said provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib. "It is possible that the abductors keep her somewhere far."
Sarah Chayse, another American woman who has been based in Kandahar for years, also thinks Mizell may have been moved away, perhaps to tribal areas of Pakistan where the Taliban have bases.
The kidnapping was an "enormous event because it is the first time that an American woman has been targeted in this manner," she said.
ARDLF work has, meanwhile, ground to a halt, said interim director Altaf Ahmad Rahimi, adding that he had no idea why Mizell would have been targeted.
"We haven't done anything bad... This is the first tragedy, the first crisis."
