BEFORE they released them this week, the kidnappers of the two Italian charity workers apparently apologized and gave each of the women a box of sweets. According to the two hostages, shortly after their kidnap when their abductors had discovered that they were aid volunteers simply engaged in helping ordinary Iraqis rebuild their shattered lives and in no way connected with the occupation forces, they were “treated with warmth”.
Experts in kidnappings have established that victims often form an exaggerated respect for their captors. They have even a name for it: Stockholm Syndrome. It describes the behavior of kidnap victims who, over time, become sympathetic to their captors. The name derives from a 1973 hostage incident in Stockholm, Sweden. At the end of six days of captivity in a bank, several kidnap victims actually resisted rescue attempts, and afterward refused to testify against their captors. That the two seized Italians should look with sympathy on their abductors should not dupe others into thinking that these people are anything more than hardened criminals.
If the kidnappers really felt “warmth” toward their innocent victims, why did they not release them straight away when they discovered they were just aid workers? If they were really “sorry” for what they had done, why did they do it in the first place? The real reason that the women were released is much less romantic. Though the Italian government immediately denied that any ransom had been paid, evidence quickly began to mount that this was a lie. If the kidnappers were indeed paid off with a million dollars, their “warmth” needs no explanation.
This puts focus on one more aspect of what the present chaos has brought to Iraq. Perhaps, the forces more active now in that country than “the liberators” and “the resistance” are private operators. Large gangs of big-time thieves were on the scene almost as soon as Saddam Hussein’s government collapsed. The inability of the US-UK coalition to put a policing machinery in its place created a vacuum that gave these gangs a free run of the Iraqi scene. They have now extended their operation to every profitable field. Kidnapping is now the “star”. It is any “businessman’s” dream -- high profit on low risk. If Italy did pay money to release its two citizens, it is a serious error. The kidnapping campaign of Iraqis as well as foreigners has been escalating anyway. If the terrorists now believe that they can bend the will of a state to their ends, then the crime is likely to increase substantially, adding yet more troubles to the already substantial security problems. It matters not that the kidnappers may not have been terrorists but just opportunists who had intended to sell their victims to Al-Qaeda or their families or government.
The principle of not negotiating with hostage takers cannot be trimmed. If it is, any foreigner or Iraqi who seems likely to command a financial or political price becomes fair game. This means that those who are in Iraq have now become even more likely targets.
