DUBAI Sarbi, a bomb-sniffing dog believed to have been abducted by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2008, has started living in style in Dubai as part of her six-month quarantine before re-entering her home base in Australia.
Operatives from Australia's special forces had planned to rescue the 10-year-old black German Pointer, in case the canine recruit ended up in Taliban hands.
Vets from the UAE Ministry of Environment and Water's office at the Dubai Cargo Village said the import permit papers for Sarbi were approved last month. Sarbi is currently staying at an undisclosed pooch hotel in a Dubai kennel that costs the Australian government Dh85 ($23) per day. She is regularly exercised and is fed and cleaned twice a day, a source said.
Sarbi was declared missing in action following a clash between Taliban insurgents and an Australian Special Operations Task Group on September 2, 2008. The firefight earned a SAS trooper a Victoria Cross for gallantry. Troops took wounded soldiers to a hospital but Sarbi was unable to catch up with them.
Coalition forces failed to pinpoint Sarbi's whereabouts. This prompted Australian troops to put out an Afghan-language lost-and-found notice in the locality where she was lost. In November 2009, 14 months after she was declared missing in action, a US soldier patrolling near a base in northern Oruzgan found Sarbi with an Afghan man and returned her to her handlers.
Sarbi left the Australian base at Tarin Kowt in May. She was taken to Kandahar for vet checks before heading to Kabul for clearances.
Dubai may have been picked as a halfway house for Sarbi because the UAE is a rabies-free country, Dr Shella Mohammad, a government veterinarian at Dubai Cargo Village, said. The Australian government said no ransom was paid for Sarbi's recovery. An insurgent leader was thought to have sought a $10,000 (Dh36,800) ransom for her return. It was speculated that special forces captured the leader's father but he did not agree to a trade-off. The Australian military denied both stories. Australian authorities are expected to give Sarbi a re-entry permit by 2010-end or early 2011, sources said.
2008
The year Sarbi went missing in war-torn afghanistan
