Paul Overby | |
---|---|
Born | November 27, 1942 Illinois, United States |
Disappeared | May 17, 2014 (aged 71) Waziristan, Pakistan |
Status | Missing for 8 years, 8 months and 14 days |
Nationality | American |
Other names | Paul Edwin Overby, Jr. |
Occupation | Author |
Known for | Disappeared mysteriously in Waziristan |
Paul Edwin Overby Jr. (born November 27, 1942) [1] is an American author who disappeared on his way to Waziristan, in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, to interview Sirajuddin Haqqani. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Overby's wife, Jane Larson, revealed it happened on May 17, 2014. Journalists agreed not to publish his identity until January 2017, when she agreed to make his identity public. [9]
Larson had believed Overby had been kidnapped by the Taliban. [5] However, on February 28, 2017, the Taliban released a statement denying that they had kidnapped Overby. [10]
Reporters Without Borders called for his release, on January 27, 2017. [11] On March 19, 2019, journalist David Rodhe, a former hostage himself, noted in the New Yorker magazine , that Overby was one of the Americans still in captivity. [12]
On May 8, 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his rescue. [7] In addition, the Rewards for Justice Program offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his location. [13]
In 1993, Overby had published a book on the Soviet–Afghan War, Holy Blood: An Inside View of the Afghan War. [14]
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was a militant Islamist group formed in 1998 by Islamic ideologue Tahir Yuldashev and former Soviet paratrooper Juma Namangani; both ethnic Uzbeks from the Fergana Valley. Its original objective was to overthrow President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and create an Islamic state under Sharia; however, in subsequent years, it reinvented itself as an ally of Al-Qaeda. The group also maintained relations with Afghan Taliban in 1990s. However, later on, relations between the Afghan Taliban and the IMU started declining.
Abdullah Mehsud was a Pashtun militant commander who killed himself with a hand grenade after security forces raided his dwelling in Zhob, Balochistan, Pakistan. He belonged to the Mahsud tribe.
Jalaluddin Haqqani was an Afghan insurgent commander who founded the Haqqani network, an insurgent group fighting in guerilla warfare against US-led NATO forces and the now former government of Afghanistan they support.
Maulavi Mohammed Abdul Kabir is a senior member of the Taliban leadership and an acting third deputy prime minister, alongside Abdul Ghani Baradar and Abdul Salam Hanafi, of Afghanistan since 4 October 2021. He previously was the acting prime minister of Afghanistan from 16 April 2001 to 13 November 2001.
Events from the year 2007 in Afghanistan.
The insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also known as the War in North-West Pakistan or Pakistan's war on terror, is an ongoing armed conflict involving Pakistan, and Islamist militant groups such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Jundallah, Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI), TNSM, al-Qaeda, and their Central Asian allies such as the IS–Khorasan (IS-K), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, East Turkistan Movement, Emirate of Caucasus, and elements of organized crime. Formerly a war, it is now a low-level insurgency as of 2017.
Kidnapping and hostage taking has become a common occurrence in Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Kidnappers include Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters and common criminal elements.
Tariq Azizuddin was Pakistan's ambassador to Turkey. He was ambassador to Afghanistan when he was taken hostage by terrorists from the Tehrik-i-Taliban on Monday February 11, 2008. Tariq was traveling, by road, from his home in Peshawar, to Afghanistan's nearby capital, Kabul. His vehicle was stopped by gunmen and he was taken hostage along with his driver Gul Nawaz and bodyguard Amir Sultan in Pakistan's Khyber Tribal Agency, prior to passing through the border crossing at Towr Kham.
The Pakistani Taliban, formally called the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, is an umbrella organization of various Islamist armed militant groups operating along the Afghan–Pakistani border. Formed in 2007 by Baitullah Mehsud, its current leader is Noor Wali Mehsud, who has publicly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban share a common ideology with the Afghan Taliban and have assisted them in the 2001–2021 war, but the two groups have separate operation and command structures.
Brigadier Sultan Amir Tarar, best known as Colonel Imam, was a one-star rank army general in the Pakistan Army, and a former diplomat who served as the Consul-General of Pakistan at Herat, Afghanistan. He belonged to the Tarar Gotra of Jutts. Amir Sultan Tarar was a Pakistan Army officer and special warfare operation specialist. He was a member of the SSG of the army, an intelligence officer of the ISI and served as Pakistani Consul General in Herat, Afghanistan. A veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War, he is widely believed to have played a key role in the formation of the Taliban, after having helped train the Afghan Mujahidin on behalf of the United States in the 1980s.
The Haqqani network is an Afghan Islamist group, built around the family of the same name, that has used asymmetric warfare in Afghanistan to fight against Soviet forces in the 1980s, and US-led NATO forces and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan government in the 21st century. It is considered to be a "semi-autonomous" offshoot of the Taliban. It has been most active in eastern Afghanistan and across the border in north-west Pakistan.
The Operation Rah-e-Nijat was a strategic offensive military operation by the unified command of Pakistan Armed Forces against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and their extremist allies in the South Waziristan area of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas that began on June 19, 2009; a major ground-air offensive was subsequently launched on October 17. It became the integral part of the war in Western fronts which led to the encirclement and destruction of Taliban forces in the region, although the Taliban leadership escaped to lawless areas of neighboring Afghanistan.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur is the leader of a Pakistani Taliban faction based in North Waziristan. Upon the formation of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in December 2007, he was announced as the militant group's overall naib amir under Baitullah Mehsud, who was based in South Waziristan, but has largely distanced himself from the TTP due to rivalries with Mehsud and disagreements about the TTP's attacks against the Pakistani state.
Piotr Stańczak was a Polish geologist who was beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Pakistan in February 2009.
This is a list of known foreign hostages in Pakistan.
On 16 December 2014, six gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The terrorists, all of whom were foreign nationals, comprising one Chechen, three Arabs and two Afghans, entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children, killing 149 people including 132 schoolchildren ranging between eight and eighteen years of age, making it the world's fourth deadliest school massacre. In retaliation, Pakistan launched a rescue operation undertaken by the Pakistan Army's Special Services Group (SSG) special forces, who killed all six terrorists and rescued 960 people. In the long term, Pakistan established the National Action Plan to crack down on terrorism.
Colin Mackenzie Rutherford is a Canadian who was held captive by the Taliban. In October 2010 Rutherford traveled to Afghanistan to pursue an interest in the country's ancient civilizations. Police informed his family he had been captured on November 4, 2010. The Taliban made a video of Rutherford public in May 2011.
Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen is a Pakistani Pashtun human rights activist from South Waziristan. He is the chairman of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM).
The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) has held public gatherings and marches at various places, including Bajaur, Bannu, Chaman, Charsadda, Dera Ismail Khan, Islamabad, Kabul, Karachi, Khyber, Killa Saifullah, Lahore, Loralai, North Waziristan, Peshawar, Quetta, South Waziristan, Swabi, Swat, Tank, Zhob, as well as in several Western countries, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, and the United States.
Mark Randall Frerichs is an American civil engineer and former US Navy diver who disappeared in Afghanistan in January 2020 and was later confirmed to be captured by the Haqqani network, a group closely aligned with the Taliban. In September 2022, Frerichs was released by the Taliban-led government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in exchange for Bashir Noorzai.
According to his family, the 74-year-old Overby had gone to Afghanistan to write a book on the ongoing war as a means of explaining the conflict from both the sides.
As The Daily Beast first reported one year ago, a group of Taliban-aligned Islamist militants had been holding an American man hostage for more than a year. At the time, The Beast withheld the hostage's name at the request of his family and law-enforcement officials.
In an article published on Thursday in The News International in Islamabad, Jane Larson, the wife of Paul Overby, said in a statement that he disappeared in May 2014 as he tried to cross into Pakistan from Khost in eastern Afghanistan.
Just this month Jane Larson, a Massachusetts resident, revealed that her husband Paul Overby had been abducted two years ago after traveling to Afghanistan to interview the head of Haqqani network for a book he was writing. His whereabouts are unknown.
In mid-May of 2014, Paul Edwin Overby, Jr., an American writer, disappeared in Khost Province, Afghanistan, where he was conducting research on a self-authored book. Prior to his disappearance, Overby suggested that he planned to cross the border into Pakistan in furtherance of his research.
For the past two and half years, Overby's family had kept his disappearance a secret and had requested media outlets that were aware that he was missing, including CNN, also keep the matter confidential out of fear for his life if it became public.
If the US citizen Paul Overby were with us, we would have made it public and stated our demands just as we have shared videos of other US citizens in our detention with the media and made clear our demands
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)A media advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, called on Wednesday for the immediate release of Paul Overby, an American writer who disappeared in North Waziristan.
But other Americans, in addition to the six in Iran, remain in captivity, including the journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing in Syria for seven years; Kevin King, a college professor abducted by the Taliban, in Kabul, in 2016; Jeffrey Woodke, a missionary kidnapped the same year by an Al Qaeda affiliate, in Niger; and Paul Overby, a freelance journalist who has been missing in Pakistan since 2014.