Feelings of nausea, tragedy, anger, and depression crowd in after it was confirmed yesterday that the extreme Islamic group holding the British engineer, Mr Kenneth Bigley, beheaded him in Iraq on Thursday.
Over the last two weeks a vigorous and moving international campaign was mounted by his family to secure his release. It touched the heart of opinion in Ireland through his family's Irish connections. It gave hope that such public political action could go some way to reverse the pace of events determined by mounting disorder and chaos in Iraq and the international terrorist organisations taking such grisly advantage of it. But it was not to be for Mr Bigley. The demands made by his kidnappers for the release of women prisoners held by the United States in Iraq proved incapable of negotiation by the British and United States governments, while reports that he had been traded to a group more amenable to bargaining were apparently groundless.
The kidnappers' cold logic was not deflected by the campaign and the way it mobilised popular consciousness about the war in Britain, nor by Ireland's involvement which had a similar effect here. The organisation responsible is an ally of al-Qaeda which is thriving on Iraq's disorder but has little support among the broad Iraqi public - or from responsible Muslim communities and leaders. The despicable outcome of this and other kidnappings alienates Iraqis and reinforces their determination to see a political solution to their country's many problems. But the occupation forces and the interim government led by Mr Iyad Allawi daily compound them.
Military and civilian resistance to them is growing because they have not been able to impose their authority and establish everyday security and public administration. While most Iraqis want to see self-government restored through free elections next year they do not see how Mr Allawi's government can do so. They want to see the occupation forces withdraw and their country cease to be a focus for movements which seek to radicalise the whole of the Middle East.
This is a growing crisis, as is made clear by the bombing of hotels catering for Israeli tourists in the Red Sea. It requires and demands a much more cohesive and credible international response. Mr Bigley's murder will reinforce Mr Tony Blair's difficulty in justifying his Iraq policies. But there can be no quarrel with his refusal to deal directly with the kidnappers or to concede a linkage between hostage-taking and terrorism. That is not to say that the refusal of the US government to change its policy on releasing the two women scientists who worked with Saddam Hussein can not be criticised.
The dignified handling of this affair by the Bigley family has evoked enormous public sympathy and admiration. But the calculated way that his kidnappers used Mr Bigley as a puppet for their own propaganda, prolonging his period of captivity in the glare of international publicity, sends a shiver down the spine