Why Islamic State takes hostages like Louisa Akavi

Monday, 15 April 2019

Islamic State is far from the first terror group to take hostages. But it has done it on a much wider scale.

Kiwi Red Cross nurse Louisa Akavi was one of those hostages. As her story emerges her eventual fate remains unclear. Part of the problem with working out exactly what happened to her is the complicated reasons behind the practice of kidnapping. Follow developments in our live blog.

Kidnapping is a very valuable tactic in 'asymmetrical' warfare – fighting between two groups of vastly different capabilities, such as a state and a radical group. While defeating an entire army may be impossible for the radical group, taking a hostage is relatively simple.

That hostage can then be traded for ransom money or the release of a prisoner the other side holds. In rarer cases – and this is something Isis is famous for – the hostage can be used as a propaganda tool. They can be forced to read out statements from the terrorist group or publicly killed in a grisly show of force.

**READ MORE:

Louisa Akavi, the Kiwi nurse who provided aid in Syria.

* Special feature - The Secret Hostage

* Islamic State's Kiwi hostage: Inside the top-secret rescue effort

* Louisa Akavi, the hardy nurse with the skills to survive

American journalist James Foley, held captive by Islamic State in 2014.

* Why we've waited five years to tell Louisa Akavi's story

* Louisa Akavi - the Kiwi nurse taken in Syria

* How Islamic State rose to power, created a caliphate, and lost it

* Islamic State's foreign hostages: Propaganda tools and bargaining chips**

Who gets kidnapped?

It may seem from afar like Isis is particularly fond of kidnapping Western journalists and aid workers.

It's true that many of the Westerners kidnapped and executed for show have been aid workers or journalists – people such as James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and David Haines. Aid workers and journalists are likely to spend time in conflict zones where Isis is active and generally have less security than the military-type Westerners who are also there.

American aid worker Peter Kassig was beheaded by Islamic State.

But most estimates put the number of Westerners kidnapped at well below than 50. The vast majority of kidnappings carried out by Isis are of locals. As Isis took over northern Iraq in 2014, the group kidnapped thousands of Yazidis living around Mt Sinjar – with one estimate putting the number as high at 6800. Many of those kidnapped were women who were forced into sexual enslavement. Some were sold back to their families for about $4300. At other points Isis has kidnapped hundreds of Assyrian Christians and released them for cash.

Why do it?

It is obviously much easier to kill someone you capture than keep them alive, especially if you are travelling rapidly between locations in a warzone. That's what happened when Isis was rampaging through Iraq and capturing groups of soldiers; in June of 2014 over 1000 Iraqi air cadets were murdered by a firing squad in one go.

But captured hostages can be more useful alive than dead, for several reasons.

A response from then-US President Barack Obama to the killing of James Foley gave Isis a greater sense of significance.

Ransoms

The clearest reason is simply money. The US Treasury estimates Isis made about US$20-45 million in 2014 from foreign ransom payments in 2014. This doesn't count small-scale ransom payments – like when smaller cells kidnap groups of locals and sell them back to families for a few thousand dollars each.

The big money is a bit murky, because no government likes to admit it has directly financed a terror machine. In fact there is a UN Resolution against it – one reason the USA, UK, Canada, Japan and New Zealand all have firm policies against paying ransoms. That's why Isis never saw the US$132m it demanded to release the American Foley, or the US$200m it wanted for Japanese hostages Kenji Goto Jogo and Haruna Yukawa.

But some countries do pay, or allow citizens to pay themselves – particularly European ones. The Spanish government reportedly paid just under NZ$10m for the release of three hostages who were held with Foley. French, German, Italian, and Danish prisoners have also been released from Isis custody with ransoms reportedly being paid. During the 2000s, US$125m was paid out to Al Qaeda, according to the New York Times.

It's worth noting that while the ransoms are substantial, Isis made far more money from more conventional means: selling oil, looting banks, levying taxes within its territory, and extorting aid. In 2014, CNN estimated Isis made about US$2 billion in total.

Terror marketing

In asymmetric wars against large armies a videotaped execution can act as a show of strength. It can draw a reaction from leaders of the greatest military powers in the world – US President Barack Obama had to respond to the Foley killing.

This response by the most famous man in the world and by Western media can act as a kind of legitimising force useful in recruiting. West Point Terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank told CNN that these videos, spread online through social media, can 'energise' potential recruits.

The videos also act as a scare tactic, and as retribution. Isis can't shoot down a US plane bombing its positions, but it can execute an American on video. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadist who led the Al Qaeda group that developed into Isis, used beheadings in Iraq as an attempt to stop foreign countries from sending troops or aid to the country to such an extent he became known as the 'sheikh of the slaughterers'. It's understood the risk to Akavi weighed heavily on the minds of New Zealand ministers as they considered their response to Isis.

There is a limit to the usefulness of such tactics however. During al-Zarqawi's beheading campaign, al Qaeda's number two man Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote to him noting that grisly videos of murder turned off a lot of the local Muslim community they needed support from. He noted captives could just as easily be killed with a bullet in a less flashy way.

Usefulness

Hostages can be valuable both alive and unmolested, if they have skills useful to their captors. There is considerable speculation that the reason Akavi has remained alive is that she is a trained battlefield nurse. They can also be traded with other terrorist groups or with governments in exchange for the release of prisoners.

So, should you pay?

There is considerable debate over whether governments should pay ransoms. The thinking behind a 'no paying ever' policy is that paying only encourages more hostage-taking.

But the numbers don't appear to bear this out. A 2017 study of the 1185 western hostages abducted since 2001 found that hostages from the USA – a country famous for not paying ransoms – were more than twice as likely to be killed in captivity. Furthermore, citizens of countries that are known to pay ransoms were not more likely to be kidnapped. When France's government attempted to move towards a no-concession policy in 2010 the deaths of French hostages increased.

There are of course other factors in whether or not a hostage is killed. Killing an American has much better propaganda value than killing an Italian.