DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - ITALY: THE ITALIANS WANT NATO & THE UN TO DISCUSS "TRIBUTE" PAYMENTS TO MOSLEM TERRORISTS FOR HOSTAGES

Italy suggests NATO, UN guidelines on ransoms

ROME - Italy, criticised over a prisoner swap with the Taleban last month, said on Thursday NATO and the United Nations should consider guidelines about appropriate ways to respond in hostage crises.

Addressing parliament, Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema defended the release of five jailed Taleban to free Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo, kidnapped in Afghanistan.

The Taleban beheaded Mastrogiacomo’s Afghan driver last month and his Afghan translator last week.

D’Alema said kidnapping cases were too sensitive to create a blanket no-negotiation rule.

“At the same time, I think it’s time to explore the possibility of guidelines shared on an international level, a code of shared behaviour,” D’Alema said. “I think, for example, in the case of Afghanistan, of a discussion at NATO.”

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has agreed to a debate on whether to have a policy on hostage deals following requests from several countries, a NATO spokesman said.

Critics of the Taleban swap, including the United States and Britain, said it encouraged further kidnappings and endangered NATO troops by returning jailed guerrillas to the battlefield.

Apparently emboldened by the hostage deal, the Taleban have since kidnapped two French aid workers and three Afghan companions. They are also holding five Afghan health workers.

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The United States of America, has past experience when it comes to paying "tribute" for hostages to moslem jihadists:


The Barbary Wars, 1801-1805

Since the sixteenth century, corsairs from the Muslim states of North Africa had controlled the Mediterranean sea lanes by force. At the time the United States won its independence, the states of the Barbary Coast--Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco, and Tunis--had been preying on the world's merchant ships for three hundred years. The Barbary pirates' methods were fairly simple: cruising the Mediterranean in small, fast ships, they boarded merchant ships, overwhelmed the crew, and took them captive. The crews were held in captivity until their home countries agreed to pay ransoms for their release. If no ransom was forthcoming, the crews were sold into slavery. Over time, most countries found it expedient simply to pay a yearly tribute to the sultans, thereby buying their ships free passage through the Mediterranean.

As a part of the British Empire, the ships of the American colonies were protected by the Royal Navy and by treaties between the Barbary States and England. However, once the United States became an independent nation, this protection was gone, and the new U.S. government was quickly forced to make treaties with the sultans of North Africa.

The Barbary Wars. Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy. Naval Institute Press.In 1796, the tributes to the sultans were modest; Tripoli's, for example, was $56,000. But the pasha of Tripoli, Yusuf Karamanli, believed he could demand higher tribute and sent a message to the United States demanding a new treaty. The demands arrived in March 1801, just after President Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated. Jefferson had long disagreed with the policy of paying tribute and argued that it would be cheaper to build a navy than give in to the sultans' ever-increasing demands.

Jefferson sent a naval "squadron of observation" consisting of three frigates--the President, the Philadelphia, and the Essex--and the sloop of war Enterprise. The American fleet arrived in Gibraltar on July 1, 1801, under the command of Commodore Richard Dale. Upon his arrival, Dale was informed that Tripoli had declared war on the United States on May 10, 1801.

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THE JIHAD, WITH ALL OF ITS COMPONENTS, IS NEVER ENDING ! ! ! !



Pertinent Links:

1) Italy suggests NATO, UN guidelines on ransoms