Counterterrorism Blog

When the Italian government this week completed a deal in Afghanistan to obtain the release of an Italian journalist hostage, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, for five Taliban prisoners, the spokesman for Italian Prime Minister Roman Prodi was quoted as saying it was a simple issue of saving a life.

"We think that the life of a person is very precious,” said Mr. Prodi’s spokesman, Silvio Sircana, who is also described as a friend of Mr. Mastrogiacomo’s. “So if there is a chance to save a life, we must do all we can do. And this was our very simple line, and not anything more.”

Ah if only that were true.

Hostage situations are terribly cruel and complicated, presenting difficult, emotional issues for the families and friends, and the hostages themselves of course. These issues present dilemmas for the governments whose citizens have been grabbed by those seeking release of their comrades from jail, political goals, or sometimes just good old cash.

The danger of making deals with kidnappers, as the U.S, and other governments have found in the past, is that the short term goal of saving one hostage can be met, but often at the long term price of endangering other citizens when terrorists conclude that they can get away with taking more hostages in the future.

This was certainly the case when Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists seized dozens of Americans and others in flurry of hostage taking during the 1980’s. In deals orchestrated by then NSC staffer Ollie North, the US traded hostages for anti-tank missiles to Iran, the prime backer of the Shiite hostage takers. But soon after one hostage was released, another one was grabbed. In effect this kept up what a State Department colleague called a “hostage bank.”

The Italian-Taliban deal was criticized by U.S., British and Dutch officials. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen, told reporters while in Kabul that “When we create a situation where you can buy the freedom of Taliban fighters, then in the short term there will be no journalists anymore.” It should be noted that in the Gaza strip the only representative of a major media still based there, a BBC correspondent, has been held hostage for more than a week by Palestinian terrorists.

As a former foreign correspondent in some trouble spots during my earlier career and the father of a journalist, I can sympathize with both Mr. Mastogiacomo’s plight during his 15 days of captivity and the Dutch Foreign Minister’s remarks. And as a former State Department counterterrorism official who was among those involved in the Lebanese hostage situation in the mid-1980’s, it is possible to understand the conflicting pressures on the Italian government in this Afghanistan situation as well as the those in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 when three Italians were kidnapped. There was a widespread assumption that that the government of then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi paid a cash ransom.

These cases are not easy to deal with, especially if persistent diplomacy and other pressures are to be used instead of caving in to demands.

But resolving future hostage situations will be made more problematic when the Italian Prime Minister’s spokesman rationalized its hostage trade as a “very simple line” to save a life “and not anything more.”

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FOOTNOTE:
The United States government has had a long-standing policy, going back at least to the Nixon Presidency, against trading prisoners for hostages and the policy was repeated in the 1980’s and more recently refined in a February 20, 2002 Press Statement by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
His statement said in part:

“Based upon past experience, the U.S. Government concluded that making concessions that benefit hostage takers in exchange for the release of hostages increased the danger that others will be taken hostage. U.S. Government policy is, therefore, to deny hostage takers the benefits of ransom, prisoner releases, policy changes, or other acts of concession.

At the same time, the U.S. Government will make every effort, including contact with representatives of the captors, to obtain the release of hostages without making concessions to the hostage takers.

Consequently, the United States strongly urges American companies and private citizens not to accede to hostage-taker demands. It believes that good security practices, relatively modest security expenditures, and continual close cooperation with embassy and local authorities can lower the risk to Americans living in high-threat environments...”