- Aug 20, 2000
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Deals from the Dark Ages
When exactly did people throw away the position of never negotiating with terrorist, kidnappers and their ilk? I suppose the fact that all nations give in to hostage takers at the national level (North Korea threatening its neighbours) means that we might as well do the same at the individual level. It is however funny that this could be spun as a victory to anyone but perhaps the Taliban and Mr. Gaddafi.
Update: Not content to merely supply hard cash, it now seems that France will also be supply Libya with those always-useful anti-tank missiles (Link). Heck of a liberation you had going on here, guys.
The day before Mr. Bae's body was found, France's equivalent of Air Force One landed in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, delivering five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor held by Libya since 1999. Accused of deliberately infecting children with HIV in the port city of Benghazi, tortured into confessing, convicted and sentenced to die, the foreign medical workers were eventually released this week because the European Union paid the Libyans US$460-million, in addition to other valuable considerations, such as an undertaking to "normalize" relationships between Europe and Libya.
The French President helped to negotiate the deal but shrugged it off as being all in a day's business. He called it "a new pragmatism in foreign affairs."
New? Personally, I'd call it a very old pragmatism. Old enough to have not only gone out of fashion, but then turn around and come back.
Taking hostages and ransoming them used to be practised by the best circles in the Dark Ages, until people no longer regarded it as comme il faut. Now it's with us again. Blame the Taliban?
Yes, by all means, or blame Colonel Muammar Gaddafiof Libya, but remember, they couldn't resurrect the charming medieval custom without the "new pragmatism" of the European Union or leaders like France's President.
The first condition is fully controlled by the putative ransom-payer -- as long as he refuses to pay. Needless to say, the refusal has to be genuine. Cheap ruses, like calling the EU's $460-million ransom payment to Colonel Gaddafi's thugdom a "settlement" between the captive medical workers and the families of the HIV-infected children, won't do. Surrender may save lives, at least in the short run, but it's no victory. Victory comes from liberating hostages, as Israeli commandos did at Entebbe or Peruvian commandos at Lima. Ransoming hostages spells defeat.
Attempting to spin surrender into a photo opportunity isn't enough to disguise defeat -- which didn't prevent the EU from trying this week. The gnomes of Brussels (or of the Palais de l'Elysee) sent France's presidential plane to pick up the Bulgarian nurses from Libya, with France's first lady, the photogenic Cecilia Sarkozy, flanked by Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's attractive commissioner for foreign affairs, at hand to personally deliver them to a joyous crowd waiting in Sofia.
"The liberation of the medics is an example of the power of the EU," commented a Bulgarian journalist, Velislava Dureva. Well, no. Rescuing the medics and guillotining Gaddafiwould have demonstrated the EU's power, but paying off a bandit regime has only demonstrated Europe's moral confusion. I'd even say it has contributed, indirectly, to Mr. Bae, a deputy pastor of his Presbyterian Church, being gunned down by his Taliban captors the next day. It happened to be his birthday, according to church officials.
When exactly did people throw away the position of never negotiating with terrorist, kidnappers and their ilk? I suppose the fact that all nations give in to hostage takers at the national level (North Korea threatening its neighbours) means that we might as well do the same at the individual level. It is however funny that this could be spun as a victory to anyone but perhaps the Taliban and Mr. Gaddafi.
Update: Not content to merely supply hard cash, it now seems that France will also be supply Libya with those always-useful anti-tank missiles (Link). Heck of a liberation you had going on here, guys.