Were Western hostages left to die?

It looks as if official reviews concerning Iraq aren’t being treated as all that urgent by the British establishment these days, with seemingly endless delays in publishing the Chilcot Inquiry. It may, though, be time to ignore this depressing precedent of failed accountability and start a new inquiry, into the deaths of Western hostages at the hands of ISIS last year.

Last week, the family of James Foley joined the chorus of consistent but barely noticed expressions of disappointment from relatives of those murdered by Daesh around this time in 2014; they’ve revealed that the FBI actually threatened them with prosecution if they spoke out about the kidnapping, or paid or attempted to pay a ransom. It’s hard to imagine the additional pressure this would have put on the family.

Their lament sounds eerily similar to that of Alan Henning’s brother-in-law, who said in an interview with the BBC directly after his murder last year that the British government had known of his ordeal for “months and months” yet sat on their hands. Henning’s brother joined him in criticising the Foreign Office: “I think it’s disgusting because, if we had been able to talk, and voice our opinions, I think the government may have stood up and listened more. We’ve seen the campaign that Alan’s generated now, all the ribbons round Eccles and everything. If this was done six months ago it could have done more good.”

At the time of the hostage crisis, the former head of the British Army also reproached Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who told the world’s media that an SAS rescue mission could not be mounted to rescue British hostages because it “showed our hand”.

With regards to Peter Kassig, the Guardian learned some months after his death that an independent rescue mission had been mounted by the American-Jewish radical human rights lawyer, Stanley Cohen. Cohen and friends communicated directly with other jihadist operatives keen to secure release from ISIS/Daesh. According to their article, “The Race to Save Peter Kassig”, what looked to be a promising release plan put together painstakingly was, at the last moment, undermined mysteriously by what appeared to be Jordanian intelligence agents.

The Foley family’s most recent criticism goes further; they are asking why Taliban prisoners were released to save Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, but not James. This is a debate which nearly happened when Bergdahl was released, but which was sabotaged by the right-wing American media once it became clear that he had, in fact, deserted his post. All US citizens are equal, except those who betray the nation’s most treasured characteristic, militarism.

There are three dimensions to the hostage debacle: the possibility of conspiracy; usual government incompetence and lack of resources; and morality — whether to negotiate with terrorists as other nations have done, or not.

Conspiracy is possible but improbable, though it’s worth considering that the United States may have ulterior motives for intervening in Iraq this time, as they always do. The map of the Near East may well be re-drawn dramatically in the next five years, with an independent Kurdistan, a new Syria and a federal or separated Iraq on the cards. What’s at stake both in the near and medium term is Iraqi oil; though it’s of low quality, the northern part of the country carries, for the moment, highly strategic pipelines. If Iraq falls fully under Iranian influence, or a new Shia state does, that will cement the Iranians as the new emperors of the Middle East, with American interests side-lined. By offering to free Sunni Muslims from ISIS, and defending Shia Iraqis against genocide, the Americans maintain credit in the region. They also need to support their friends in Kurdistan, who could represent a crucial new ally if the borders are redrawn. Still, even there, the Iranians have long had some hold over the Kurdish leaderships spread across Greater Kurdistan.

Now, to justify military action to secure what could in fact be geostrategic, rather than strictly humanitarian, interests, the US administration has already seen fit to fabricate a new jihadist group, the mythical “Khorosan”, as well as spinning the Yazidi crisis to their own ends and arguably exaggerating the domestic terrorist threat. This has created the necessary media environment to “sell the war”, just as the 45-minute dossier claim made the case for the 2003 invasion. It was hard not to wish for the death and destruction of Jihadi John when watching those videos, but allowing him to kill his hostages may have played into Western hands.

Conspiracy is unlikely, however, because there is a better explanation: incompetence. The British Foreign Affairs Committee has written at length about the lack of Foreign Office resources dedicated to Iraq, as well as the lack of Arabic speakers in the department. Most British government officials withdrew from Iraq some years ago, their commitment to rebuild the nation as a democracy conveniently forgotten. Likewise in the United States, the administration has been side-lined out of Baghdad for years by Iran, and has struggled to keep up with the number of new jihadist groups sprouting up in Syria, as well as the complexity of their structures. The level of intelligence and Special Forces infrastructure in Iraq pales in comparison to Yemen, for example. It is no coincidence then that when the American hostages went missing, the US government failed to find them in the way that hostages taken in similar circumstances in Yemen were located far sooner. One hostage negotiator approached by Britain’s specialist anti-terror unit in the Metropolitan Police, Special Branch, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, told me that he was only approached when it became known publically that the hostages were about to be executed. This kind of delay in engaging with expert negotiators leaves many questions for the British and American intelligence bureaucracies and foreign policy and political executives to answer.

Finally, there is the moral question about negotiations with terrorist hostage-takers. It’s a matter of historical fact, not opinion, that nearly every organised campaign of mass and targeted violence perpetrated by a militant group in pursuit of a political aim has at some point led to negotiations, be they with the IRA, FARC or, possibly in the near future, Hamas. We should side-line the political aim that some jihadist groups have for establishing a caliphate, which is an unrealistic and unacceptable goal for free peoples with the right to self-determination. Yet there are demands that ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other aggressive and radical jihadist groups still have which are worth consideration.

Notably, these include a fairer settlement for the Palestinian people. Though ISIS would probably prefer Middle Eastern Jews to be driven into the sea, this is an impractical goal upon which they would need to compromise. Nevertheless, the West would severely dent the group’s ability to recruit by removing the fundamental injustice of the Israeli occupation, supported by the West and the West alone. Likewise, as many liberal and conservative Western commentators argue, the level of Western support that is given to the Gulf States and their armed forces is unacceptably high.

Any “negotiation” with terrorists must acknowledge that moderate Islamism, so long as it is democratic, justly administered and doesn’t involve blowing up or killing civilians, has the right from time to time to engage in the government of Muslim nations. These groups also have the right to effect legitimate jihad – notably against the Syrian, Israeli or Egyptian militaries — but only under the most exceptional of circumstances. It is the right we afforded the Polish underground during the Second World War against the Nazis, and it is a right that the peoples of the Middle East must also be granted.

In the short term, the Western public would do well to demand a formal review of the handling of the hostage crisis, notably the inexplicable delays in the British government’s serious engagement in trying to secure their release, and the circumstances under which Peter Kassig’s release may have been sabotaged. Furthermore, let’s get someone other than Lord Chilcot to run it if we want it to see the light of day.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.