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2 Hostage deals: Koreans look to the
US By Robert Neff
SEOUL
- The recent return of two of the 21 South Korean
hostages held in Afghanistan by the Taliban was
greeted with happiness and despair in Seoul. Many
feel that these first two hostages were released
relatively easily in comparison with the expected
difficulty in freeing the remaining 19. Two other
hostages seized with the group on July 19 have
been killed by the Taliban.
Shim Jae-hui,
a 21-year-old student interviewed near the US
Embassy in Seoul, said, "I do not think the others
will be released
or,
if they are, they will not be released for a long
time." Her friend (who would not be identified)
quickly chimed in and said she, too, did not think
they would be released.
Despite the South
Korean government's claim that no ransom has been
paid, many Korean citizens are skeptical, as the
government recently offered to pay an undisclosed
sum to the Taliban. It is widely believed that
ransoms were paid for the releases of kidnapped
Korean fishermen off the coast of Somalia, and
construction workers in Nigeria, as well as in
other places.
In the first few weeks after
the kidnappings in Afghanistan, the US Embassy
witnessed several demonstrations of angry and
desperate citizens imploring the United States to
meet at least some of the Taliban's demands, the
main one being the exchange of Taliban prisoners.
Their pleas were met with the sympathetic ears of
the George W Bush administration, but answered
with the standard reply, "The US does not
negotiate with terrorists."
While the
fervor has died down over the past couple of
weeks, and the demonstrations in front of the US
Embassy have become less frequent or non-existent,
there is still a strong sentiment among part of
the South Korean population that the US is not
doing enough to help free Korea's hostages.
The US-backed Afghan government of
President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly refused to
bow to the Taliban's demands. Washington has also
come out strongly against a prisoner swap. "The
Koreans are telling us that 'we're trying to
persuade the Kabul administration and the US
government to accept the Taliban demands' - but it
seems they can't," a Taliban spokesman was quoted
as saying this week.
At a demonstration on
August 15, a South Korean holiday for Liberation
Day, a spokesman for a students' group denounced
the US policy of not negotiating with terrorists.
He argued that the US is hypocritical and only
last year exchanged prisoners for a kidnapped
American journalist. He was referring to Jill
Carroll, who was freed from abduction in Iraq
after five female Iraqi prisoners were released
from US custody.
So why not the same for
Koreans? The student spokesman insisted that the
US bore responsibility for the kidnapping as a
result of its "war on terror" and its occupation
of Afghanistan.
The United States has
negotiated (and likely still does) with terrorists
unofficially. It has even aided South Korea with
its own hostage negotiations. According to Brian
Jenkins, a terrorist expert with Rand Corp, in the
late 1980s, Washington often used people outside
the US government to aid in negotiations for
foreign hostages held in Lebanon.
"Sometimes they acted on their own;
sometimes the State Department sought their help,"
said Jenkins, who advised the Catholic Church and
the Church of England in 1988 after the abductions
of officials from both churches in Lebanon.
Richard P Lawless Jr, who is the new US
deputy under secretary of defense for Asia and
Pacific affairs, may have been one of the
individuals Jenkins alluded to.
While
little is known of Lawless and his early career,
what is known or speculated about seems almost
like something out of a spy movie. Lawless served
for a short time in the US Army before joining the
Central Intelligence Agency. He was with the CIA
for nearly 15 years (1972-87), advancing to
director of operations, before quitting after
allegedly running afoul of senior officials for
conducting secret operations for then-CIA director
William Casey. Although he no longer worked
officially for the government, he may have
continued to work unofficially for it throughout
the late 1980s.
Abduction of a Korean
diplomat On January 31, 1986, Do
Chae-seung, the second secretary of the South
Korean Embassy in Beirut, was abducted from his
chauffeur-driven car while on his way to work.
According to the Lebanese police, five men in an
olive-green Mercedes-Benz and armed with AK-47
assault rifles and revolvers shot out the front
tire of the embassy vehicle and forced it to stop.
The gunmen forced Do into the Mercedes' trunk and
then sped off, leaving the chauffeur and first
secretary, Kim Wu-chul, who was also a passenger
in the car, unharmed.
Kidnappings in
Lebanon were described as "epidemic". Since the
start of the civil war in 1975, an estimated 2,300
people had been kidnapped and most likely killed.
Do was the 39th foreigner kidnapped in West Beirut
in the two years since Muslim militias had seized
control of the region.
The South Korean
Embassy was stupefied by the daring attack and
announced: "We just cannot understand why he was
kidnapped. We have no political enemies in
Beirut." But politics was not the issue.
Shortly after the kidnapping, a Muslim
radio station in Beirut received a call from a
previously unknown group calling itself the Green
Brigade. It demanded US$10 million within eight
days (February 10). "Otherwise," it threatened,
"we will resort to violent measures." Do was
eventually released the following year, in late
October, after a ransom was allegedly paid.
Nabih Berri, a Shi'ite Muslim leader,
confirmed that a ransom had been paid, but did not
indicate who paid it. "I say with deep regret that
a ransom of at least $1 million was paid to win
his [Do's] release" and that Berri's militia had
"contributed to protecting [Do's] voyage, but it
did not play a role in releasing him."
So who did pay? According to an
article published in MedNews (Middle East Defense
News) on June 11, 1990, Lawless met an
Iranian
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