Just Finished Reading: We Want To Negotiate – The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages and Ransom by Joel Simon (FP: 2019) [163pp] 

It was hard for me to resist a title like this one. We hear about them all the time it seems. A journalist, contractor or ‘extreme tourist’ taken hostage by a group of rebels in South America, the Middle East or Africa. Threats are made, videos posted on-line, demands come through for money, release of fellow members or something more political like a message, a resignation or troops being pulled out. Sometimes it's all very public with a country's politicians talking of negotiating teams, what they will (and won’t) agree to and so on. The media circus, especially when the hostage is one of their own, hang on every word. Other times the first we hear of any negotiations is when the hostage is returned either dead or alive – usually with the accompanying denials of ransoms being paid or disputes about how much.  

This is the area covered by this fascinating short book. The author is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists so not only did he have some serious ‘skin in the game’ he also had access to the governments, the security agencies, private contractors and victims' families involved in various hostage situations over the past few decades. Countries attitudes to hostage negotiation vary widely. Some countries are willing to publicly, or at least without a media blackout, speak either directly or indirectly with the kidnappers to get their people back, others will negotiate fully in private whilst a few (at least publicly) refuse to enter into any negotiations with ‘terrorists’ - a term that is often very freely defined as required. The most common excuses (or explanations) for not negotiating is that it gives the kidnappers legitimacy and that it provides them with funds (or released compatriots) to continue their efforts. Worse still, so they say, it encourages further hostage taking in the expectation that ransoms will be paid. Not paying up therefore reduces future kidnappings and cuts off a funding stream for terrorist activities. Interestingly the stats over the past decades do not support this approach at all. Governments who are known to pay ransoms do not find their citizens kidnapped more often than those countries known not to pay. Generally, the only difference in outcome is those countries that do not negotiate tend to get their citizens back, when they do, in body bags rather than to cheers and tears on the airport tarmac. As to the idea that ransoms simply allow terrorist bands to operate far longer than they would have been able to do – this also is questionable as often, post payment, money is recovered by security forces and criminal gangs are arrested or killed during the recovery process. But obviously there are no easy answers in any of this as the author points out throughout the book. This is why companies who operate in kidnap risk countries have ransom insurance and why professional private hostage negotiators exist and (generally) do valuable work in the area. A quick and interesting insight into a seemingly perennial news headline. More from this series to come.