Italy creates market for hostages

The New York Times reports that in exchange for a journalist held hostage in "lawless southern Afghanistan" as the Times put it, Italy admitted that it traded five Taliban prisoners.

As the Times writes, this "appears to be the first time prisoners have been openly exchanged for a hostage in the wars that the United States and its allies are fighting there and in Iraq." The move was criticized from Washington to London to Amsterdam.

“We don’t negotiate with terrorists, and we don’t advise others to do so either,” State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said, paraphrasing U.S. policy.

The U.S. and many other governments believe that by conceding to the demands of hostage takers, while one life may be saved, you effectively make hostage-taking profitable, and thus create a market.

As Dutch foreign minister, Maxime Verhagen, expressed this idea, "When we create a situation where you can buy the freedom of Taliban fighters when you catch a journalist, then in the short term there will be no journalists anymore."