Hostage taking has paid in the past — but it has won Isis nothing

The three recent beheadings by the so-called Islamic State have been peculiarly, barbarically pointless. IS was asking western governments to leave them be to wreak havoc across the Middle East; it was an unrealistic demand. But rather than toning down their behaviour to a level perhaps tolerable, they simply executed their hostages. By murdering two American journalists and a British aid worker IS have demonstrated to the world that they don’t mind killing people, in case anyone hadn’t noticed, but they haven’t won any PR points, let alone any concessions.

In 1995, Robin Harris pointed out that, whatever we might like to believe, hostage taking pays.

Western liberalism is the creed of happy endings. Western liberals endlessly scan public affairs at home and abroad for evidence that virtue is rewarded and crime does not pay; and when it appears that crime pays very well indeed, they find consolation in the thought that the criminal’s reputation or ’cause’ has been ‘damaged’.

Actually, he pointed out, recent Bosnian-Serb hostage takers weren’t interested in world opinion and in fact the kidnapping had ensured the end of Nato air strikes against them.