LANDI KOTAL, Dec 27 Insecurity and a significant increase in kidnapping for ransom cases have forced a large number of families in Landi Kotal and Jamrud tehsils of Khyber Agency to migrate to safer places.

Various militant out fits and a number of criminal groups have intensified their activities after a surge in armed attacks against vehicles carrying fuel and other supplies to Nato forces in Afghanistan since November this year.

Official estimates and media reports show that nearly 50 persons including government officials, businessmen of the area and political opponents had been kidnapped during the last two months. In most of these cases the local political administration expressed their inability to register a case or proceed against the groups involved in such unlawful activities.

The apathy of the political authorities have left the residents of the area, especially the businessmen community to either pay huge amount as ransom to rescue their kidnapped relatives or abandon their residences and shift to safer places.

A trader in Landi Kotal, Haji Hazrat Wali, told Dawn that in keeping with the persistent threats to his family, he had shifted to Peshawar. Another electronics dealer Nadeem Wali said that he had rented a house in Lahore and would soon shift his family there.

Most of the residents of the area have expressed their anger over the local administration`s failure to curb the recent wave of abductions for ransom.

A custom clearing agent in Torkhum Nasir Khan said that the local administration had deputed more then three hundred Khasadar personnel at the Torkhum border, who he alleged were involved in minting money by facilitating illegal entry of Afghans into Pakistan and smuggling wheat flour in connivance with local traders.

Nasir Khan insisted that additional Khasadar and Khyber Force should be deployed at around fifteen security check points at the 35-kilometre long Peshawar-Torkhum Highway to ensure security of the residents of the area.

Hakim Shinwari, senior vice president Tribal Areas Chamber of Commerce and Industries said that business activities in Khyber had come to a complete halt due to insecurity. He said that a number of local traders were avoiding travelling in their personal vehicles or to use the Peshawar-Torkhum road due to a rapid increase in kidnapping cases.

The brutal killing of the principal of Government Elementary College in Jamrud and kidnapping of at least a dozen government employees have also affected attendance at a number of government offices; local schools, colleges and hospitals.

Students in Jamrud and Landi Kotal complained about the absence of their non-local teaching staff for so many days as the teaching staff, is also terrified by the recent spat of kidnapping and killing of one of their senior colleague.

Attendance of non-local doctors at the Agency Headquartre Hospital in Landi Kotal had also been affected and most of them had been avoiding using the Peshawar-Torkhum road due to insecurity.

AFGHAN NATIONAL KIDNAPPED Unidentified persons kidnapped an Afghan national and a tribesman from Zarai area of the Khyber Agency on Saturday, residents of the area said.

They said that armed men took away the two persons at gunpoint and shifted them to an undisclosed location. Names of the kidnapped persons could not be ascertained.