KABUL, Afghanistan — As a manhunt for two missing American sailors widened throughout a dangerous region of eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, a Taliban spokesman said that one of the Americans had been killed in an ambush and the other one had been captured.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Kabul on Sunday that the military would “do all we can” to return the sailors. The U.S. military in Afghanistan was offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to their return.
Afghan and American forces were carrying out an aerial and ground operation in Logar province, where the two men were attacked. Police officers at checkpoints were handing out reward notices to passengers on minibuses, a favorite form of travel in Afghanistan’s rural areas, and radio stations in Logar were announcing the reward, according to a reporter at one station and the director of another.
A NATO officer confirmed that the $20,000 reward was being offered and said, “It is not unusual; it is an option that a commander in a localized area can choose to exercise.”
The military would say little about the practice because the search was under way for the two sailors, who were last seen leaving a military base in Kabul in an armored sport utility vehicle on Friday afternoon.
The American government has long had a policy of refusing to pay a ransom for a kidnapped employee. Nor was it clear that the Taliban were asking for one. The only reports so far were that they were interested in a prisoner swap.
But the military has offered rewards in several previous cases, usually immediately after servicemen disappear, before their kidnappers have a chance to spirit them to a more distant and secure location.
The distinction between a ransom and a reward appeared to be somewhat gray, although in Afghanistan, where people can earn tens of thousands of dollars in the poppy business or in transporting heroin, it seemed unlikely that $20,000 would be of much interest to the kidnappers; the reward seemed to be aimed more at bystanders who might have seen or heard something thatcould inform the military’s search.
A reward offer could also yield a surfeit of useless information that is either immaterial or fabricated by people who simply want to get the money. Typically tips in kidnapping cases offer little productive information, according to private contractors who work on them.
“Certainly we don’t want to incentivize people to grab people or to get their mitts on a reward,” a NATO official said.
Rewards were offered on at least two occasions in Iraq, in 2006 and again in 2007, to obtain information about soldiers who had been captured.
In a case that bears some similarities to the one in Afghanistan, an American general said $200,000 was offered and some 50,000 leaflets distributed when three soldiers were missing after an ambush south of Baghdad in 2007, according to a report published by The Associated Press.
Shahidzia, a radio reporter in Logar who goes by one name, said he broadcast information about the reward after receiving a telephone call from an interpreter for the chief American military public affairs officer in the province,who had provided a description of the two men and mentioned the reward.
Later, on a minibus home from work, he said, “I saw a paper with the photos of the two missing Americans on both sides in the driver’s hand. When I asked him where he got it from, he said that Afghan police were handing it out on the main highway to all the drivers and passengers and were telling everyone to provide information about them and get a reward.”
Another station, Radio Isteqlal in Logar, also broadcast information about the sailors, said Lal Muhammad Torabi, the station’s director.
The resources being put into the search were considerable, according to residents and a spokesman for the Logar governor’s office, Din Muhammad Darwish, who said that the province “had been locked down since yesterday.”
Interactive
The Taliban suggested that the capture of the two sailors had been fortuitous, that the pair had strayed into an area they controlled and that they had seized the opportunity.
The Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in a telephone interview that the two Americans had entered an area known as Dasht-i-Qala when the Taliban spotted them and tried to capture them alive. The area is in Charkh District, at the southern end of Logar province, about 60 miles south of Kabul.
“They resisted, and one of them started shooting,” Mujahid said. “One soldier was trying to resist and the other one was willing to surrender.” Shots were exchanged for a while before one was killed and the other was captured, he said.
“They carried weapons, binoculars, and they were uniformed,” he said, and they were alone.
Now, Mujahid said, “the Taliban are waiting for the leadership to decide what to do” with the living sailor and the body of the dead sailor; he said both were in a safe location.
The two U.S. servicemen were targeted by the Taliban in a village in Logar province Friday, Zabihullah Mujahed, a spokesman for the Taliban, said in a telephone interview. He said the serviceman who was captured is in good health.
“It is very early to request something from Afghan or U.S governments in order to release the U.S soldier,” Mujahid said.
Afghan officials in Logar province also thought one sailor had died in the ambush, said Darwish, the spokesman for the Logar provincial governor. “One of the Americans was killed late on Friday,” he said. “We heard he was first wounded, then that he later died because of wounds he sustained in the attack.”
NATO officials have declined to say why the two sailors went to Logar, or whether the trip was sanctioned by the military.
Mullen said the trip appeared to be “an unusual circumstance” but emphasized that he did not have all the details.
“We’ve got a large number of forces focused on the return of these two individuals,” he said. “It is certainly our intended focus to do all we can, as it has been in the past, to return to American hands anybody who has been captured or killed.”
Although soldiers make up the lion’s share of American forces in Afghanistan, which is landlocked, most bases have amix of servicemen, including from the Navy.
Elsewhere, the Taliban overran the center of Barg-e-Mahtal, a district of Nuristan province, in a remote area of northeastern Afghanistan on the Pakistan border, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
It was the second time this summer that insurgents have taken over the district. They had previously been routed by Afghan commandos working with American Special Operations Forces after holding the district for a few days in late May.
The servicemen were seized in Matinai, a village in an area south of Kabul controlled by the Taliban, The Washington Post reported, citing unidentified Afghan officials.
Separately, five U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday in southern Afghanistan by improvised explosive devices, NATO said.
More than 1,000 U.S. soldiers have died in the war in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense said Friday. President Barack Obama has vowed to start bringing U.S. troops home next year.
Information for this article was contributed by Eltaf Najafizada and Dan Hart of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/26/2010