Why the U.S. Does Not Pay Ransoms for Americans Kidnapped by Terrorists

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Should governments pay ransoms to terrorists to free hostages? The brutal murder of the journalist James Foley by Islamist State terrorists has brought this debate to the fore. Here, in a talk given two years ago, David S. Cohen, US Under Secretary for Terrorism and Finance Intelligence, puts the argument against paying ransoms. It was delivered long before the rise of Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq. It is, however, a definitive statement of the Obama Administration's policy towards ransom paying.
In some respects, there is encouraging news on terrorist financing. Since the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on America of September 11 2001 and the July 7 2005 suicide bombings in London, the international community has achieved major successes in limiting terrorist financing.
Osama bin Laden and several of his key financial lieutenants, including Saeed al-Masri, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, and Abu Yahya al-Libi have not lived to see the most recent anniversaries of their most brutal attacks. Their deaths, along with international efforts to combat terrorist financing, have degraded the ability of Al-Qaeda's central organization, its "core," to raise funds and carry out new attacks.
Indeed, over the past decade, close cooperation among governments in Europe, the Gulf, and elsewhere, as well as between governments and the private sector, has enabled the international community to take great strides in defeating more traditional methods of terrorist financing.
The less encouraging news is that while Al-Qaeda has experienced a decrease in funding, its affiliates in the Sahel and Yemen are doing better financially, in large part by raising enormous sums of money through kidnapping for ransom (KFR).
Al-Qaeda's core is not in the position to provide generous funding to its affiliates, such as Al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) operating in the Sahel and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) operating primarily in Yemen. Instead, these Al-Qaeda offshoots are self-sufficient, raising their own funds and themselves providing support to the next generation of violent groups.
In response to this new reality, governments have had to adapt, keeping one eye on the struggling Al-Qaeda core and the other on its strengthening affiliates.
Today, especially in Mali, but also to some extent in Yemen, we see these Al-Qaeda affiliates gaining strength. And at the root of their strength is the money they have amassed, including, importantly, through kidnapping for ransom. Kidnapping for ransom, of course, is neither terribly sophisticated nor even all that novel. Indeed, examples of KFR date back to biblical times.
Today, we see terrorist groups like AQIM and AQAP, sometimes in coordination with local criminals, take foreign nationals hostage, and then demand that their victims' governments, employers or families pay huge sums of money – and perhaps make other concessions – to obtain their release.
Those taken hostage run the gamut, from aid workers to tourists, from employees of private companies to diplomats or other government officials. AQIM and AQAP have turned this age-old tactic into a successful money-generating scheme, turning kidnapping for ransom into our most significant terrorist financing threat today.
The numbers speak for themselves. The US government estimates that terrorist organizations have collected approximately $120 million in ransom payments over the past eight years. AQIM, the Al-Qaeda affiliate that has likely profited most from kidnapping for ransom, has collected tens of millions of dollars through KFR operations since 2008. It raised significant funds from kidnapping for ransom operations in early 2012, and was holding nine hostages as of the middle of last month.
For its part, AQAP has collected millions of dollars through kidnapping operations since 2009, and was holding two hostages as of this past August. And kidnapping for ransom is not confined to these Al-Qaeda affiliates.
Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan has raised several million dollars in ransoms in recent years. And the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf Group, which relies primarily on criminal activity for its funding, has obtained more than $2 million in ransom payments since 2008.
What's worse, the size of the average ransom payment is increasing. In 2010, the average ransom payment per hostage to AQIM was $4.5 million

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Pub: 18 Sep 2023 15:41 UTC
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