Global Power of Talk: Negotiating America's Interests by Fen Osler Hampson & I. William Zartman

Author:Fen Osler Hampson & I. William Zartman [Hampson, Fen Osler & Zartman, I. William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317258902
Google: myXvCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-11-17T09:38:16+00:00

Negotiating with Hostage Takers

A special case of talking with terrorists involves negotiations over hostages. There are many stories. In Beslan, in 2004, Chechen terrorists captured an entire school of 1,200 people. It was only on the second day that they made their demands known—independence for Chechnya—in return for which they would call off all violence against Russia. After a number of sporadic contacts, only fifty-two hours after the takeover, Russian troops stormed the building, causing 362 deaths, including 31 terrorists and 176 schoolchildren.

In 2006, Hamas terrorists finally managed to capture an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit. Repeated attempts were made to secure his release and some reports indicate agreements were worked out on the basis of an exchange for several hundred Palestinians held by Israel, only to be canceled by the Israeli government. The price for Shalit in numbers of detainees released continued to rise, but five years later he was still in captivity.

In 1977, an Italian biscuit maker was seized by a band of professional kidnappers, who demanded $3.4 million for his release. Frantic negotiations ensued, in which the hostage played a major role in getting the kidnappers to realize the limited amounts of money his family could actually produce. Seventeen days later he was released for nearly $1 million.

In 1999, a band of fundamentalist Kashmiri nationalists hijacked an airplane with 189 passengers. The plane, on a flight from Kathmandu, Nepal, to New Delhi, was forced to land in Amritsar in India, then Lahore in Pakistan for refueling, and then to Kandahar, Afghanistan, then ruled by the Taliban, who served as mediators and guarantors. The hijackers sought the release of some of their jailed colleagues, ransom for the hostages, and publicity for the plight of occupied Kashmir. Six days of negotiations produced the release of the hostages against the release of three prisoners held in India and safe passage for the hostage takers as well.

There are as many outcomes from hostage-taking as there are cases, with few common characteristics. But the negotiation process is clear, starting with the total demands of the hostage takers and the total refusal of the authorities to make payment in any terms for the release of the hostages. Hostages are terrorists’ capital, or bargaining chips, that is, items of no intrinsic value to terrorists but created for the purpose of bargaining away. Hostage takers want to negotiate. They want to get full price for their hostages and they try to overcome their essentially weak position by appropriating a part of the opponent and trying to get the best deal out of the opponents’ efforts to get that part back. The problem is that the world does not accept their deal.

But that is merely an extreme case of any negotiating situation. Terrorists tend to focus on their original terms of trade—release of hostages in exchange for fulfillment of demands—and are little inclined to look for reductions and alternatives, options that need to be developed if negotiations are to succeed. As in any negotiations, when they

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