Kidnapping ordeal is over
Canadian man, U.S. wife, three children heading home after being freed
American Caitlan Coleman was already pregnant when she and new husband Joshua Boyle, a Canadian, started a backpacking tour of rough-hewed central-Asian countries in 2012.
By October of that year, they had crossed into Afghanistan, a country wracked by a bloody insurgency.
And then disaster struck. The couple was taken captive by a Taliban-linked terror group and held for five years, with Coleman giving birth to not just one but three children amid what she called “atrocities” by the kidnappers.
The nightmarish — and bizarre — hostage drama finally ended Wednesday as a raid by Pakistani troops freed the parents and their three children from the grips of the notorious Haqqani network.
Acting on “real-time” intelligence from U.S. sources, Special Services Group troops attacked the kidnappers as they moved the family across the frontier from Afghanistan, said Tariq Azim Khan, the Pakistani high commissioner to Canada.
“Pakistan commandos took action at the border and there was a shootout, and eventually Mr. Boyle, Ms. Coleman and the three children were rescued,” he said in an interview Thursday.
One report suggested Boyle, 34, was slightly wounded in the gunfight. Khan said the family was unharmed, and flown by helicopter to the capital, Islamabad.
A U.S. State Department spokeswoman said she could not confirm a report by The Associated Press that the family had refused to fly to the U.S. on board an American military aircraft, opting for a later commercial flight instead.
Boyle’s parents, Federal Tax Court Justice Patrick Boyle and wife Linda, voiced relief in a brief video statement They had also just learned of the birth this summer of their third grandchild.
“It was amazing,” Linda Boyle said of the telephone call she got from her son, the first in five years. “He told me how much his children were looking forward to meeting their grandparents and that he would see me in a couple of days.”
Patrick Boyle thanked the American, Afghan and Canadian governments for their efforts.
“Most importantly we relayed to the Pakistani high commissioner our thanks for the courageous Pakistani soldiers who risked their lives and got all five of ours out safely,” he added.
And yet the operation was something of a surprise, partly because the Pakistani government has been criticized for quietly supporting the Haqqani group. Western critics say it uses such militants to extend its influence in Afghanistan and as a buffer against rival India.
Only a few months ago, the U.S. had withheld US$50 million in aid for Pakistan because it was allegedly doing too little to combat the terrorist organization that seized Boyle and Coleman.
President Donald Trump suggested Thursday the development meant Pakistan was now honouring America’s wishes to do more to “provide security in the region.”
But Khan said past criticism has been unfair, overlooking the fact that 8,000 Pakistani soldiers and 71,000 civilians have been killed in clashes with various terrorists.
For Boyle and Coleman, 31, the events capped the latest chapter in a colourful history, one that includes another brush with Islamic extremist figures.
Boyle had been married briefly to Zaynab Khadr, sister to Omar Khadr, convicted of terrorist acts by the U.S., after a long and controversial sojourn in the Guantanamo Bay prison. They later divorced.
The whole Khadr family spent years in Afghanistan, their father an al-Qaida member. Osama bin Laden even attended one of Zaynab’s earlier weddings.
Now living in Sudan, she has been pilloried for past comments suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were justified, and praising Afghanistan’s former Taliban government.
Coleman grew up in a small Pennsylvania town, bonding with Boyle over a mutual love of Star Wars. They married in Costa Rica in 2011 while on a months-long trek through Latin America.
The couple had not initially included Afghanistan on their central-Asian itinerary, their families say. But within days of entering the country, they were captured by the Haqqani network.
Boyle described delivering his second son by flashlight in one of several letters exchanged between him and his parents.
But sources suggested the hostage-takers became infuriated that the Afghan government had secretly tried and planned to execute a leader of the Haqqani network, and in a video released late last year, the couple warned they could be killed.
But a video the families provided recently to the Star and ABC-TV in the U.S., and recorded this January, hinted at a possible breakthrough.