Investor's Business Daily, April 12th, 2007
Terrorism: The Italian and Afghan governments have learned a hard lesson from their dealings with Taliban rebel kidnappers: What you get when you grant concessions to Islamofascists is dead bodies.
It was learned this week that Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government apparently paid $2 million to Taliban terrorists for release of an Italian free-lance photographer abducted in Afghanistan last fall.
Shelling out a pricey ransom may have worked in saving that one person, but it also let the terrorists know that hostage-taking can be an effective way to get what they want.
Since then, Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo was seized by the forces of Taliban's military commander in southern Afghanistan, Mullah Dadullah, early last month. Captured with him were his translator, young Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi, and their Afghan driver, Sayed Agha.
Naqshbandi was soon beheaded, footage of the atrocity eventually being shown on Italian TV. Mastrogiacomo was then freed when Afghan President Hamed Karzai released five Taliban prisoners under pressure from Prodi.
Agha was beheaded when Karzai refused further demands and said such deals "will be never be repeated."
Obviously emboldened by the Mastrogiacomo deal, the Taliban went on to abduct two French aid workers and their three Afghan companions. The rebels also hold five Afghan health workers hostage.
One Taliban commander in the southern Helmand province this week told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) that "kidnappings are now more important to us than suicide attacks," adding that "we will follow this path in the future."
The U.S. and Britain both blasted the Mastrogiacomo deal, pointing out it only encourages further abductions -- and places NATO forces in Afghanistan in greater peril by sending imprisoned Taliban terrorists back into combat.
Look closer at the decision to play ball with these bloodthirsty killers and even more negatives turn up:
It's clear that Prodi pressured Karzai to give in to the Taliban so the Italian prime minister could triumphantly bring Mastrogiacomo home and save his center-left government. Prodi's parliamentary coalition was on the verge of collapse less then a year after its narrow victory over conservative Silvio Berlusconi. Prodi warned Karzai that if Mastrogiacomo was not released, Italy might remove its 2,000 troops from Afghanistan.
The deal has undermined Afghanistan's pro-Western government, with Karzai under harsh attack from Afghans for the double standard of placing more value on the lives of foreigners than those of his own people. He was willing to grant concessions to terrorists for the release of an Italian, but now with the lives of eight more Afghan hostages at stake he refuses to budge.
Apparently, the Taliban tricked Karzai and Prodi by releasing only Mastrogiacomo after promising to let his Afghan companions go, too, in exchange for the five Taliban.
As one Afghan analyst remarked to IWPR, Karzai's concessions for Mastrogiacomo "showed the Afghan people that this is a foreigners' government. Afghans are not worth anything to them."
In the wake of this inevitable disaster as the result of negotiating with terrorists, Prodi's government has announced it wants NATO and the United Nations to "explore the possibility of guidelines shared on an international level, a code of shared behavior" regarding the payment of ransoms for hostages.
In other words: Next time, Prodi wants to be able to say he was making the terrorists an offer he couldn't refuse.
That, of course, is a monumental cop out. The hard truth is that there cannot be guidelines for negotiating with terrorists, especially those of the Islamofascist persuasion.
The Taliban, al-Qaida, and all their confreres around the world are engaged in a battle to the death with Western civilization. Make no mistake about that.
To let them use hostage-taking as a valuable weapon in this war -- as Prodi and Karzai have foolishly done -- makes victory over this supreme evil of the 21st century all the more distant.
Copyright 2007 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
