Author's Podcast 1 February, 2006 - American News is Comedy 2 February, 2006 - A Uniformly Uninformed Citizenry 7 February, 2006 - ... Nor Any Drop to Drink 8 February, 2006 - Reader Comments 10 February, 2006 - Lead by Example: OUR STORY 15 February, 2006 - Kidnap & Ransom: Perspective 23 February, 2006 - Kidnap & Ransom: Conclusion

Kidnap & Ransom: Perspective - Rod Amis continues his investigation into the growing international tactic of kidnap & ransom as a means of extortion and intimidating and shares some provocative perspectives on the practice. .

15 February 2006: Even as OUR STORY on kidnap-and-ransom (K&R) was filed here at the Huffington Post, Doctors Without Borders released a statement revealing that two of their staff had been kidnapped in Colombia.

Two Doctors Without Borders Staff Members Detained in Colombia

Amsterdam/Bogotá, February 9, 2006 - Two staff members of the international medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/MÈdecins Sans FrontiËres (MSF) have been detained by an armed group in the northeast of Colombia. The staff members were part of a team exploring possibilities to expand health services to the population in Norte de Santander, a province isolated by violence.

"We ask for their immediate release," says Geoff Prescott, general director of MSF-Holland. "As an independent humanitarian organization we expect that all parties respect our neutrality and impartiality."

MSF has been providing essential medical services to vulnerable and displaced civilians throughout Colombia since 1985. In many locations, MSF teams use mobile clinics to reach communities that often have no other access to healthcare. Spending two to three days at each site, the teams see an average of 90 patients per day. At present MSF has 49 international and over 150 national staff working in Colombia.

As far as MSF is able to establish, the two detained staff members have been treated well and are in good condition. MSF has taken precautionary measures regarding its projects and the safety of its staff in Colombia.

The Good News, in this case, was that the two doctors were quickly released and have continued their work. Such is not always the case, as I've reported in previous columns.

The Bad News is that Christian Science Monitor journalist Jill Carroll's kidnappers have now placed a 26 February deadline on their demands being met. They threaten to assassinate Ms. Carroll otherwise.

While headlines blare about the taking of hostages by terrorist organizations very little is written in the American press about the actual dynamics of the situation. And series like my own magazine's on the actual plight of a victim, first with Thomas Hargrove and now with Jill Carroll, is unusual. The Christian Science Monitor has done an excellent job of keeping us informed, as has Carroll's friend and colleague Natasha Tynes at her Blog.

One cannot but suspect that the travel industry and national governments concerned about the foreign income for their tourists industries influence press coverage of this important issue. It could be argued that both the terrorists involved with K&R as a means of buying weapons and financing their operations and recruiting and the trans-global corporations involved in keeping people moving around the world are complicit in keeping this story just below our radar screens.

Ironically, while the courtiers of the global, multinational companies can count on K&R insurance coverage (see Chubb Insurance Group K&R pdf in the previous report) and journalists for large media conglomerates might be able to obtain it through their organizations, it is the many aide workers and independent journalists (more likely to provide accurate reports from on the ground) who often find such coverage beyond their reach. That means that these two latter groups enter troubled regions at their own risk.

It should not be surprising, in this view, that being "embedded" was a good option for employees of large media conglomerates covering stories in Afghanistan or Iraq, as well as other Middle East hot spots. The conglomerates were freed of investing in the pricey services of private security firms for the protection of their reporters (they were with the troops, after all) and also of the cost of K&R insurance coverage.

It is not entirely accidental, in other words, that most American news organizations, including CNN, which built its reputation on global coverage, have stringently cut back on their investment in overseas bureaus and reporters. The risk management "experts" like those listed at the conclusion of this post, would have little effort to make in convincing these organizations that the price of the ticket far outweighed the return on investment.

Few of us are informed, for example, that the Philippines is high on this list of where the tactic of K&R is used to intimidate both locals and foreigners and finance rebel activity. This article at the Philippine Center for Investigative Journal (PCIJ.org), for example, highlights that fact.

Interestingly, in terms of our investigation of the issue and media coverage of it, when the BBC ran a poll on whether K&R is justified some of the comments from individuals in small countries were that it is.

Here's one sample comment along those lines, for those reading this who won't follow the link provided:

Superpowers and former colonial powers who seldom have to fight on their own soil would of course condemn this form of "terrorism". I do not know the situation in Sierra Leone but in response to the question, the answer is yes. Imagine that you live in a tiny country being invaded by a larger and militarily superior aggressor. Your country may fall any day now and your back is to the wall....To me, this justifies taking enemy hostages, even if they are children. And what's more, to hell with the Geneva Convention, POWs should be tortured to death if necessary to obtain any essential information regarding the enemy. I would rather do this and more to the enemy than let the enemy decimate my own people. - Siow Tian Rui, Singapore

My bringing this provocative quote in at this point in our investigation is neither accidental nor gratuitous. I include it now for purposes of perspective. In other words, your very definition of what constitutes terrorism or narco-terrorism (not withstanding my use of both terms in framing the ground this series intends to cover) often has to do with which end of the spear point of Empire you inhabit. If you are holding the spear, your view of events and circumstances is entirely different than that you'd have facing the spear point.

A warlord in Afghanistan, reportedly the world's largest heroin producer today, a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, reportedly the organization behind the largest European drug-trafficking network today, or a member of the Revolutionary Peoples Army of Colombia (FARC), would see no reason to worry about the morality of using drug sales to finance the realization of their ambitions because the lives destroyed by these drugs would those of their enemies in the United States and Europe. The former is the largest consumer of all the world's resources and most especially addictive drugs. The latter is more than often a fellow traveler and former home to the imperialists of these nations' most recent experience.

Both K&R and drug trafficking, from that end of the spear point, could be considered reasonable means of self-defense. In short, a means of leveling the decidedly imbalanced playing field.

That the United States's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its precursor the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) have been alleged by many to have used both narcotics trafficking and kidnap-and-ransom (now termed "extraordinary rendition") to achieve their aims, it has been argued, only served as the play book for insurgents around the globe.

I don't mean to advocate the validity of the position by stating it. I simply believe that it is a position that an honest journalist and discerning readers must acknowledge.

The mere fact that kidnap-and-ransom has spread as a tactic of international extortion efforts, and a new source of revenue for insurance companies and security firms, speaks to its success in our time. The list of countries in which the tactic is used has increased, rather than decreased, despite European successes in eradicating its earlier practitioners like the Red Brigades and other far left extremist groups who used the practice.

---

In November, 2005, a German archeologist and aide worker gained the rare distinction of being the first person from her country to be kidnapped in Iraq. The woman's name was Susanne Osthoff. The incident received almost no coverage in the American press, as one might suspect. For those readers who read German, you can find the story here; those of you who love commentary can read about it in English here.

What countries are we talking about? Kashmir, Indonesia, the Philippines, Colombia (Leader of the Pack for the last decade,) Nigeria, Iraq (for obvious reasons), Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast; but the list also includes countries one might not expect like Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Nepal and Israel.

The Players

If you're interested in the area of K&R risks, one of the company's you're likely to contact is an international player like Kroll Associates. It's likely you've never heard of them. You should have, as

• this article
• and this article
• and this article
• and this article

point out.

Kroll has been at the top of the heap, in terms of providing risk assessments for corporations and individuals of record operating abroad for years. The Center for Public Integrity reports that Kroll made $229, 671,000 in government contracts along alone between fiscal years 1990 and 2002. Though Kroll is relatively low profile (by intention) compared to organizations like North Carolina's Blackwater USA.

Blackwater Security Consulting, a division of Blackwater USA, is the balls-out, let's get in your face organization that makes no bones about hiring international mercenaries to provide its services. One look at the Web site gives you every indication of what they are: guns for hire. They describe themselves thusly:

... our staff has a wealth of exceptional experience worldwide and is renowned for dealing with high-risk situations and complex operations. Our mission is to provide the client with veteran military, intelligence and law enforcement professionals with demonstrated field operations performance tempered with mature experience in both foreign and domestic requirements. We employ only the most highly motivated and professional operators, all drawn from various U.S. and international Special Operations Forces, Intelligence and Law Enforcement organizations. We focus on physical and personal security, personal security/risk and assessments, and training.

What is not considered often enough is the moral conflict between using private military contractors (PMCs) by democracies as part of their (sometimes) secret foreign policy apparatus and as highly-visible represents of the extension of their power abroad. Is this a suitable business enterprise, for example, for a war zone? What does it say about the nation employing these tools both overtly and covertly simultaneously?

These latter questions are addressed incredibly well by Duncan Campbell in a 2002 report entitled "Marketing the New 'Dogs of War'". His investigative piece brings up the more troubling aspects of dealing with and being complicit with mercenaries.

The kidnappers are not the only people making money from K&R.

It is compelling, to this reporter at least, that when we look into the stories of K&R that most grab our attention and pull at our heart strings, from Tom Hargrove to Terry Waite to Susanne Osthoff and Jill Carroll, we never find the names of the high profile insurance companies or security consultants mentioned thus far in this investigation.

Thanks for dropping by.

Go to First Post - AMERICAN NEWS IS COMEDY

Go to the Second Post - A Uniformly Uninformed Citizenry

Go to the Third Post - ... Nor Any Drop to Drink

Go to the Fourth Post - Reader Comments

Go to the Fifth Post - Lead by Example: OUR STORY

Go to Final Entry - Kidnap & Ransom: Conclusion

© 2006, Rod Amis.
E-mail your comments to rod@g21.net.