WASHINGTON — The beheading of freelance journalist James Foley has forced a new debate on the longtime U.S. and British refusal to negotiate with terrorists, and Europe and the Persian Gulf’s increasing willingness to pay ransoms in a desperate attempt to free citizens.
The problem: How to save the lives of captives without financing terrorism groups and encouraging more kidnappings.
By paying ransoms, governments in the Mideast and Europe have become some of the biggest financiers of terrorism groups. By refusing to do likewise, the U.S. and Great Britain are in the thankless position of putting their own citizens at a disadvantage.
Foley’s captors, the Islamic State militants, had for months demanded $132.5 million from his parents and political concessions from Washington. They got neither, and the 40-year-old freelance journalist from New Hampshire was beheaded within the last week inside Syria, where he had been held since his disappearance in November 2012.
Extremists called his death a revenge killing for the 90 U.S. airstrikes, as of Thursday, that have been launched against Islamic State militants in northern Iraq since Aug. 8.
But the ransom demands began late last year, even before the Islamic State — one of the world’s most financially thriving extremist groups — had begun its march across much of western and northern Iraq.
“They don’t need to do this for money,” said Matthew Levitt, a counter-terrorism expert at the Washington Institute think tank. “When you ask for $132 million, for the release of one person, that suggests that you’re either trying to make a point … or you don’t really need the money.”
A senior Obama administration official said Thursday that the Islamic State had made a “range of requests” from the U.S. for Foley’s release, including changes in American policy and posture in the Mideast.
At the State Department, deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said the militancy, which controls a swath of land across northern Syria and Iraq, has collected millions of dollars in ransoms so far this year alone.
“We do not make concessions to terrorists,” Harf told reporters. “We do not pay ransoms.”
“The United States government believes very strongly that paying ransom to terrorists gives them a tool in the form of financing that helps them propagate what they’re doing,” she said.
Diplomats say ransoms paid or arranged by western European governments and the Gulf state of Qatar have provided the bulk of financial support for violent groups. That has spurred the U.S. and Britain to push a campaign discouraging ransom payments.
The Treasury Department has estimated at least $140 million worth of ransoms have been paid to al-Qaeda and other terrorism groups since 2004.
France and Qatar are most often identified as governments that frequently pay or arrange ransoms — usually to free European nationals. But France has denied doing so, as have Germany, Italy and the Nordic counties of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. All are accused by security experts, diplomats and others of having paid ransoms. Qatar typically refuses to comment on the issue.
At least three Americans are still being held in Syria. Two of them are thought to have been kidnapped by the Islamic State. The third, freelance journalist Austin Tice, disappeared in Syria in August 2012 and is thought to be in the custody of government forces in Syria.
