I wonder who's really holding these poor people, as the Aggressors are using this as propaganda, and to further the claim that the people they're fighting are somehow just "the Taliban", as opposed to an Afghan Resistance Movement, legitimized by their Aggression, and empowered by their willingness to fight a ground war from the air - due to lack of resources and manpower - ensuring a maximum number of civilian deaths (well, that and the fact that they're there to prop up a brutal, corrupt Puppet Regime, energy pipelines and the heroin industry).

Whilst agreeing that we are unlikely ever to be presented with a government report of "resistence", I don't think that hostage taking and killing is quite the "feel good" story that psyops would be looking for at the moment.

For sure, they won't be banging on about al Qaeda in Afghanistan for a while. That would be too embarrassing, so the Taleban are the natural successors as a catch-all baddie.

From what I can gather, the possibility of anyone being able to form a true grassroots resistance, and not some breakaway drug/ethnic warlord faction, is less than nil.

The ordinary people of Afghanistan are too busy selling their daughters to put food on the table to be able to even afford 1 non-factionalised bullet, let alone the gun to fire it.

Besides, hostage taking of civilians is terrorism full stop. Quite how anyone can be legitimized in targeting civilians is beyond me, and that includes Bush & Blair... and a special note of including Rumsfeld for the civilian family of Iraqi Fedayin fighters being held hostage on his watch.

If the West keeps this up, the meaning of the word "democracy" will change to 'an intense war of attrition targeting the poor' and "freedom" will be 'a never ending theater of guerrilla warfare where people are free to cross the borders as refugees if they are healthy/wealthy enough'.

They have already started to sound more like threats.