Dealing with terrorists

The Times expresses all that usefully can be said about the horrors that the hostage Kenneth Bigley and his family are going through:

It is important that the release of kidnap victims is politically non-negotiable. If not, the number of kidnappings and the outrageousness of demands will inevitably increase. To say this might sound cold to the point of callousness, particularly to the Bigley family. It implies that the only options when faced with the prospect of the murder of a hostage in conditions like these are a highly implausible change in attitude by those holding the captive, an improbable escape or successful rescue mission. Painful as it is to acknowledge, this may be the case.... It is right to attempt to contact the kidnappers but not to bargain. The British and US governments have made clear their positions, and the fumbling in Baghdad is likely to be the inevitable consequence of an inexperienced administration confronting the most tragic of circumstances. It is precisely at moments such as this that unambiguous leadership is demanded.

If someone I loved were held hostage by these demons, I should feel exactly as the Bigley family do. The torment of those whose loved ones are threatened can't, however, determine policy. That isn't callousness: it's disinterest (i.e. between the current and the future victims of terrorism), which is a quality essential to democratic government as it is to a system of justice. My only query about The Times's argument is whether it is in fact right even to attempt to contact the kidnappers, when the only thing we could say to them is that we demand our citizen's release immediately and unconditionally, and that the terrorists' demands will not be met. One authority on terrorism whom I frequently cite, the Irish historian Conor Cruise O'Brien, made this point in a lecture entitled 'Liberty and Terror' in 1977, when he was a Labour Cabinet minister in the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government. O'Brien maintained that, while there were no certain ways of ending terrorism, there were more or less hopeful ways of dealing with it. The more hopeful ways included:

... [c]onvincing the terrorist that he is not going to get his own way (that involves refusing to talk with him, since though he can argue fluently from his own particular premises, he is not accessible to rational argument, based on premises other than his own).

The Times is absolutely right in requiring that unambiguous leadership be demonstrated. How dispiriting it is therefore to have to report on the activities and outrageous charges of a man whom I have discussed before and should cease to be surprised by. The Press Association reports:

An MP has appealed to the Foreign Office to fly him to Iraq to open talks in a bid to secure the release of hostage Kenneth Bigley. Paul Marsden accused the Government of “going through the motions” in its handling of the crisis and said Mr Bigley could pay with his life. The maverick MP, who defected from Labour to the Liberal Democrats in protest over Iraq, suggested his anti-war stance would give him more influence with religious leaders. And he complained that despite faxing Foreign Secretary Jack Straw twice with his offer he only got a response after persistent phone calls and that was in “diplomatic gobbledygook”.

Mr Marsden, who got involved after being informed that Mr Bigley had a connection with his Shrewsbury and Atcham constituency, told PA News: “What I offered was to travel to Iraq if need be to facilitate the discussions about the whole situation. I think I have far more credibility because of my background opposing the war. I found the prevarication astonishing; they appear to be in disarray. They appear to be killing time waiting for him to be executed if he has not been already...."

During the Iraq war Marsden mocked Coalition troops' military capability and drew an analogy between their campaign and that of the Axis powers in World War II. Shortly after the overthrow of the Taliban, Marsden claimed that under the rule of those who murdered at least 2000 Shi'ah Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif, "the people of Afghanistan had lived in peace". I had not expected him to go lower than this, and the kindest word I can find for his latest intervention is hubris. Knowing that he would lose his seat if he fought it again, Marsden will be standing down at the next election; the imminence of his departure is no excuse for the Liberal Democrats' retaining him in the parliamentary party, let alone on the front bench.