Former captive: Slain Afghan
aid workers were ‘unwavering’

INSPIRATION Tom Little, leader of the mission team that was ambushed by gunmen in the mountains of Afghanistan, inspired people to work in the region. Heather Mercer, a former Taliban prisoner, said Little’s message made her want to live among the Afghan people. (Photo courtesy of International Assistance Mission)

By Erin Roach Kabul, Afghanistan—Heather Mercer, who along with Dayna Curry was held captive nine years ago by the Taliban for 105 days, said the aid workers who were killed recently in Afghanistan were an example of what it means to love a forgotten people. Mercer told Baptist Press when she learned that 10 aid workers had been murdered in the mountains of Afghanistan, possibly by the Taliban, she was shocked and immediately thought they could have been some of her friends from her own time there. Indeed, Mercer did know Tom Little and Dan Terry, two of the men who were killed when a group of gunmen surrounded the team after they had trekked days in the mountains to provide medical care to Afghans living in a remote region. “They were unwavering. They were not afraid to give their lives,” Mercer said of Little and Terry. “Their hope was in Jesus. Their hope was in the promise of heaven. … I hope when my life is through that I can have lived the same way, wholeheartedly and fearlessly for the gospel.”

Mercer said Little was the first person she ever met who worked in Afghanistan. She was a 20-year-old sophomore at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, when she was inspired by his message. “Hearing his stories of Afghanistan riveted me and all the more made me want to go and live among them,” she recalled. Mercer and Curry had been working with the interdenominational Shelter Now ministry in Afghanistan in 2001 when they were among eight westerners arrested by the Taliban and held in prison. They later were rescued by U.S. Special Forces. “There are so, so few in the world that would do what they did, so few that would literally give their entire lives to serve in a place like Afghanistan,” Mercer said of the aid workers. “They are heroes of the faith.

Heather Mercer

“Whether they were ever sharing the gospel directly or if they were sharing indirectly, they were displaying who Christ is in a place that is desperately in need of the tangible witness of Christ,” she noted.

Mercer said she was moved by the news that five of the eight foreign-aid workers in the group will be buried in Afghanistan.

“I think that’s such a testimony of where their hearts were. These people weren’t just foreigners serving in a foreign land. They were Afghans,” she said. “These were foreigners who so loved the Afghan people that they became Afghan themselves. And even in their deaths, they will stay there. It’s a picture of how much they have given their lives for these people.”

The aid workers are a testimony for the Christian world of what it looks like to follow Christ to the world’s hardest places, Mercer said, and she urged believers to pray for their families.

“They will be very missed, but we know that what they’ve done for the land of Afghanistan will not go unremembered,” she said. “There will be an inheritance in that country because of what they’ve given their lives for.”

After they were rescued from prison, Mercer and Curry spent the next two years traveling the United States talking about God’s love for the Afghan people. When the war on terror expanded to Iraq, Mercer moved back overseas to work with the Kurds of northern Iraq.

“It’s more commonly known today than it was 10 years ago, but the Kurdish people in many ways are similar to the Afghans,” Mercer explained. “For many years under (Saddam Hussein’s) regime they were oppressed. They were fleeing for the mountains because of chemical warfare and the destruction of their towns and villages, and they were really a forgotten people, a lot like the Afghans have been.

“They even have kind of a proverb in their culture that says, ‘We’re the orphans of the universe and those who have no friends but the mountains.’ In many ways there is a connection between the Kurds of Iraq and the Afghans.”

Opportunities for service abound as the Kurds slowly embrace democracy and establish their society, Mercer noted. In 2006, she helped start the Freedom Center, which addresses physical needs in a community of about 100,000 people.

In 2008, she began Global Hope, an organization with a goal of mobilizing the church to invest in and engage the Islamic world so Muslims on the front lines will have an opportunity to hear the gospel.

Not a day goes by, Mercer said, that her experience as a Taliban captive doesn’t cross her mind as inspiration to continue the work in the Middle East.

“I’ve often thought Afghanistan is the place that Jesus would live,” she said. “I’ve been to about 50 countries, many of them in the Muslim world, and Afghanistan by far is the darkest place I have ever been. Those are the places that Jesus loves to move.” (BP)

Western Recorder issue date: August 17, 2010.