Is Russia taking help of Taliban to fight ISIS?

Taliban freed a group of hostages including a young afghan man who were kidnapped by Islamic State fighters in Zabul nearly nine months after they were kidnapped.

Interestingly, days before reports from Russia reveals that Russian President Vladimir Putin is turning to an old enemy ‘Taliban’ to share intelligence as the number of ISIS fighters grow in regional neighbour Afghanistan.

“Russian military officials are working with the Taliban to gain information on the Islamic State group are willing to share the intelligence with other countries operating in the region”, says Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

The young man was part of a group of hostages who were eventually freed by the Taliban and his story shows Afghan Taliban now standing against ISIS.

Nabi, 25-year old construction worker, who had recently got married, was on his way to the capital in the hope of finding work, when armed men stopped the long-distance bus he was travelling on the way to Kabul.

The gunmen, dressed in black and wearing masks, singled out passengers and drove 30 of them away to a remote village in the southern province of Zabul.

Initially reports blame Afghan Taliban for the attack but after two days in captivity Nabi and his fellow hostages realized that the kidnappers are no other than ISIS.

“They said they are from Islamic state militant and wanted to exchange us for their women and children who were being held by the Afghan government, said Nabi to BBC.

The hostages reveals that they were treated with extreme brutality by their abductors.

The worst point came when the kidnappers beheaded one of the hostages.

They filmed the murder in front of Nabi and the others, and in an echo of Islamic State atrocity videos in Syria.

“We lost hope in everything except God,” Nabi says. “The torture, the cruelty and the hardship made death seem like a much easier option than staying alive.”

Freedom finally came after local Taliban intervened and attacked the area being held by the IS fighters.

The hostage group were taken to the house of a local Taliban commander.

“Around four or five hundred Taliban came to congratulate us,” he says. “The commander told them not to hug us because we were too weak to stand on our feet at that stage,” said Nabi.

Nabi is trying to recover from his ordeal. He’s clearly traumatised and has suffered kidney damage from the beatings he endured.