Hostage crisis dramatises issues

Everyone is moved by the plight of a half-Irish family whose loved one is facing beheading overnight

Everyone is moved by the plight of a half-Irish family whose loved one is facing beheading overnight. Nothing personalises a bitter conflict in the same way as hostage-taking. This is especially so when the victims are innocent by-standers ruthlessly brought to the centre stage in order to test the commitment of political leaders.

So it is with the crisis in Iraq this week in which two US hostages were murdered and a third, the British engineer, Mr Kenneth Bigley, remains in mortal danger. The heartbreaking pleas by Mr Bigley and his family have brought the issues at stake home to British citizens in a way few other events in the Iraq war have done.

There is no excuse for such barbarous seizure of innocent civilians nor the nauseating public beheadings of Mr Bigley's two colleagues. They must be condemned by all civilised people. Yet it must be recognised that the irruption of hostage-taking on this scale commonly signifies a deep crisis in which normal politics no longer applies. So it is in contemporary Iraq. Mr Bigley's plea that Iraqi women prisoners held by the United States be released, as demanded by his kidnappers, has been rejected by the Iraqi, British and US governments. They say normal politics is emerging from the war and would be undermined were they to concede such claims. The interim Iraqi leader, Mr Iyad Allawi and President George Bush made strong statements along these lines yesterday. They cannot accede to the kidnappers' demands without undermining their own credibility.

The growing security crisis in Iraq contradicts their case, as is now much more widely recognised. Military and civilian resistance to the interim government led by Mr Allawi is growing, largely because it has not been able to impose its authority, establish everyday security and restore public administration. US and British troops have lost control of many areas. Although most Iraqis want to see self-government restored through free elections next year, they believe Mr Allawi's government cannot do this because it has been imposed by occupying forces whom they want to withdraw from their country. Rather has Iraq become a focus for terrorist movements and a source of radicalisation for the entire Middle East region. The coalition forces are more and more seen as the problem rather than the solution.

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Mr Bigley's fate now depends on the remote possibility his kidnappers might respond to the moving humanitarian appeals that his life be spared, including those from this country arising from his mother's Irish nationality. They may expect to achieve more by sparing than murdering him in view of differences within the interim government on whether to release one of the two women scientists being held by US forces. The British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, carries a heavy burden and faces a terrible predicament. There is likely to be a public and political backlash if Mr Bigley is murdered and he is seen not to have done enough to save him.