On Thursday, the Afghan Taliban said it had captured a U.S. military dog and posted a video of the dog online. In the video, the dog is wearing a “complex harness” and mills around members of the Taliban, clearly frightened.
According to the Guardian, the dog appears to be Belgian Sheepdog. The paper talked to “an experienced dog handler” who has worked in Afghanistan, who said the dog “just wants to get back to his handler.
“You see the ears? They are down, that tells you that the dog is not aggressive and just wants to feel safe. Right now the dog is terrified.”
Though early reports said the dog was from the U.S. military, the Pentagon finally weighed in and said the dog did not belong to U.S. forces, but rather British.
According to the Guardian, the Ministry of Defence declined to confirm who owned the dog and referred all questions to the NATO mission in Kabul. NATO, in turn, said that the process of identification of soldiers, human as well as canine, belongs to national governments.
Taliban spokesmen said they captured the dog and the weapons they showed off in the video during a gunfight in eastern Laghman province on Dec. 23. On that day, a British soldier was killed in Afghanistan, according to the Guardian.
A Taliban spokesman said the dog is being held in a “safe place.”
“The condition of the dog is OK, he was not injured and is not being mistreated,” Zabihullah Mujahid told the Associated Press.
The Taliban have named the dog Colonel. There have been no demands for ransom, and as of press time the British have not claimed the dog or announced demands for his release. Hopefully, that will come.
Watch the video:
We’ve written many stories on the invaluable work military dogs do in Afghanistan, sniffing out IEDs and weapons and aiding in search and rescue. To think one is in the hands of the enemy — who, as the Telegraph notes, has “railed against infidel dogs” for years — is horrifying.
Via the Guardian
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