The Discerning Texan
-- Edmund Burke
Monday, April 02, 2007
How to Deal With Kidnappers (and how NOT to)
How does one deal with terrorists and the nations that sponsor such fanatics? We could do worse than to emulate the Soviets. Hat tip commenter bastiat who researched a post of mine a bit deeper and found this nugget.
What a concept: showing strength! Instead Blair has turned this incident into his own "Munich." Wretcherd weighs in that the Brits can still salvage something:Russia: As Middle East Heats Up, Moscow Maintains Balancing Act - RADIO FREE EUROPE / RADIO LIBERTY
A BOMB FOR QOM? Russia has had direct experience in dealing with Hizballah. In 1985, extremist groups in Lebanon linked to Hizballah kidnapped four Soviet diplomats, one of which was later killed.International media at the time reported that the kidnappers received parcels with the decapitated heads of their close relations in order to secure the diplomats’ release. However, speaking to TV-Tsentr on July 8, KGB Colonel Yury Perfiliev, who at the time headed the KGB’s Beirut station, said the media reports were just a KGB bluff aimed at pressuring the kidnappers.
But according to Perfiliev, he met with the then-leader of Hizballah, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadallah, and told him that the Soviet Union could not tolerate such a humiliation. He said that if the kidnappers were not released then the Soviet Union could accidentally fire a nuclear missile in the direction of the Iranian city of Qom, where Ayatollah Khomeini and other top Muslim clerics lived. The three remaining prisoners were subsequently released.
Teheran is doing well because they are not playing the diplomatic game. In fact, they are violating every rule in the diplomatic book. Threatening to try uniformed men as spies, demanding apologies from victims of what was essentially a cross-border snatch operation, displaying their captives on TV. And now, pelting the British embassy with stones and firecrackers. They are punching entirely below the belt while their opponent is locked into a Marquis of Queensbury stance. That's asymmetrical warfare. [...]
By committing to the diplomatic game, Britain not only gave Teheran advance knowledge of what they would do, they absolutely guaranteed the availability of potential British hostages since an Embassy would have be maintained to carry out the diplomatic minuet. And as demonstrator quoted above emphasized, they can have a hundred more hostages anytime they please. As long as Britain behaves predictably Teheran can continue to string it along and promise a solution right around the corner, until finally Her Majesty's Government is so exhausted it will agree to any humiliation to get the sailors and marines out. But as I indicated in my basketball analogy, there's the still the rebound. Britain should not forget the rebound. Now that the diplomatic basketball has rimmed out, what Britain may consider doing now is what I suggested in the first place. Take the whole thing off the diplomatic track without initiating any overt hostilities.
Whitehall should withdraw the entire British diplomatic mission from Teheran and deal with the Ayatollahs through their representatives to the United Nations; they can expel every Iranian diplomat and official from the UK. And if possible, they should convince their European partners -- for whatever they are worth -- to do the same. Make the Ayatollahs beg for a diplomatic solution. Make them ask, "what's next?" Make them beg the British to talk to them. At the minimum this will create uncertainty in Teheran. It forecloses nothing, even a return to diplomacy. And in that atmosphere of uncertainty, the naval force in the Gulf will becoming truly menacing. They should have done this from the first day, in my layman's opinion. But hey, every day is the next day of the rest of our lives.
Don't hold your breath...
