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Interview with an Afghan Kidnapper

Hostage-Takers Thought German Said 'Shoot Me, Shoot Me'

By Matthias Gebauer and Holger Stark

Close to a year ago, Afghan warlord Nissam Udin kidnapped two German engineers and allowed one to be shot and killed. In his first interview with Western media, Udin spoke to SPIEGEL about his negotiations with the German government, the ransom money it paid and the murder of engineer Rüdiger Diedrich.

The men appear quietly, as if out of nowhere, their silhouettes outlined sharply against a clear blue sky over Afghanistan. As they stand on the summit of a mountain ridge in Wardak Province, Kabul seems an eternity away, even though the physical distance is only 150 kilometers (93 miles). They wear turbans and wield Kalashnikovs, a bazooka protruding from the backpack of one of the Pashtun men while another carries one strapped to his back like a bow-and-arrow set. The wind carries the rattling noise of their mopeds down into the valley. They approach from the left and right like the two jaws of a pair of pliers, and then suddenly they've arrived.

It could be a scene from the film "High Noon," but set in Afghanistan's Hindukush Mountains. The outlaw has entered the scene. He says "Salam aleikum" and recites a verse from the Koran as a greeting. This is his terrain, these inhospitable, desolate mountains in the countryside southwest of the capital Kabul, where, at an altitude of 3,100 meters (10,170 feet), there is no vegetation other than the occasional shrub. Nissam Udin, the man on the moped, sits down on a large rock. He is meeting with two Afghan employees of SPIEGEL, to talk about the Germans and what happened last fall.

It was here, less than 10 months ago, that Nissam's men abducted two Germans and shot and killed one of them. Rüdiger Diedrich, an engineer from the northeastern German city of Wismar, has been dead since July 20, 2007. His business partner, Rudolf Blechschmidt, a civil engineer from the town of Ottobrunn near Munich, who was in the area with Diedrich to repair a dam, suffered for almost three months as Nissam's hostage before the German government paid a ransom 84 days later and secured his freedom. "We were on patrol," says Nissam, referring to the July morning of the kidnapping, "we were hunting, and we showed no mercy."

Money for the Murderers

Blechschmidt has since left Afghanistan, but the Pashtun they call Mullah Nissam is still on the minds of many -- both in Afghanistan and in the German government in Berlin. For the Germans, the Mullah is an admonition, a reminder of a deal that brought Blechschmidt his freedom, but at a high political price.

At Berlin's request, the Afghan government released four of Nissam's accomplices from prison in exchange for Blechschmidt and his Afghan companions. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was opposed to the deal, but he allowed it to go through out of consideration for his German allies. In addition to the release of the prisoners, the Germans had a suitcase filled with $600,000 (€375,000) delivered to Diedrich's murderer. Perhaps he spent some of that money on the moped he drives today.

When it comes to hostage-taking, the German government has consistently adhered to the principle, in place since the so-called German Autumn of 1977, that it would never again negotiate with terrorists. The German autumn marked the culmination of a hostage-taking and killing spree that saw the murder of 34 people at the hands of the Red Army Faction, a far-left German terrorist group. After the murder of Rüdiger Diedrich in Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a Social Democrat, reiterated the government's standard position when he said: "This crime cannot go unavenged."

It was a sentence meant to deter copycats and signal that Berlin does not bow to the demands of kidnappers. Without this sentence, the strategy of secretly paying ransom money would be ineffective, because kidnappers would otherwise gain the impression that they could blackmail the government and get away with it. It explains why the German Federal Prosecutor in Karlsruhe launched investigations, even after the kidnapping of Diedrich and Blechschmidt. Steinmeier's sentence is valid, but only when it comes to hostage crises that take place within Germany. It isn't worth much abroad, because it is practically impossible to uphold. In crisis regions, the German government usually opts not to pursue kidnappers because the tools of German criminal law are of limited value abroad. The use of military or paramilitary forces, such the KSK or GSG 9 elite units, is usually seen as too dangerous after the risks and opportunities are taken into account.

Kidnappers like Mullah Nissam are pursued less zealously than, for example, Taliban sympathizers who have committed an attack on Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, in Afghanistan. Because of this policy of little or no follow-up, Nissam is probably the first kidnapper who German investigators not only know by name, but can also call at any time without Nissam himself having to feel any reason for concern. "I have also given my number to the German Embassy," the Pashtun boasts.

Inside Mullah Udim's Realm

Those who dial Nissam's number will find themselves talking to a polite warlord who promptly invites his callers to pay him a visit in Wardak, where he owns a few hundred sheep and commands anywhere from 30 to 50 fighters. At the agreed meeting place, visitors must hand over their mobile phones and switch from their vehicle to the backs of mopeds. From there, they are driven around for hours until two young men lead them to a mobile tent camp where Nissam Udin is currently staying. A red-and-white mast supporting wireless antennas serves as a beacon of a civilization reachable only by days-long marches.

The journey to see Nissam is an expedition into a part of Afghanistan that is descending into chaos. It is a region where the government has no authority, where local militia leaders and tribal elders are the rule of law, and where the NATO protective force maintains only a small provincial reconstruction team with a few hundred Turkish soldiers who hardly dare leave their base. German NATO General Hans-Lother Domröse, using his organization's often euphemistic language, calls this part of Afghanistan "poorly accessible." Nissam Udin is a fixture here.

The mullah wears his beard trimmed short, white athletic shoes and a turban. He keeps his face covered with a piece of material and sunglasses. He estimates his own age at about 30, but he can't be any more precise than that. When he lifts the cloth hiding his face with his powerful arms for a moment, he reveals an angular, deeply tanned face. In Afghanistan, a man of 30 is already considered an old hand when it comes to the trade of war. Nissam has decided which side he prefers to fight on. "We are Taliban," he says.

These three words constitute a significant problem for the German government. To this day, the Foreign Ministry officially refers to Blechschmidt's kidnappers as "local criminals," avoiding the word Taliban. In this way, Steinmeier hopes to avoid creating the impression that the German government has paid money to insurgents. But anyone listening to the mullah speak can hardly doubt that this, at least indirectly, was exactly what happened.

"We Taliban," says Nissam, speaking in the lilting Pashtu language, "we all have the same objective." The warlord has sat down on a rock, and he emphasizes his words by comparing the insurgents with his arm. He says that the insurgents are like the fingers on a hand: one finger is shorter, while another is longer, but they both belong to the same hand. This hand, he says, has now risen up against the government and its international backers.