Wayne Long, a former UN security officer in Somalia sheds shocking light on how he dealt with pirates who kidnapped UN aid workers and other foreign nationals.
His description of Somalia sounds awfully like Gaza, where Gilad Shalit is being held captive. Long writes in the NY Times:
Eventually, after long and heated internal discussion, the United Nations security team persuaded the United Nations country team that the most effective approach would be to use humanitarian aid and assistance as a lever to gain release of hostages.
Somalia is pretty much a stateless state. Humanitarian aid and clan association are major centers of gravity. In fact, clan leaders stay in power in part by controlling the distribution of aid. Our strategy was therefore simple: United Nations assistance was withheld from the Somali clan or region by which or in which hostages were being held until those hostages were released. In every case there was a release, and in no case were hostages harmed or ransom paid. (On the downside, no pirates were brought to trial or punished in any way.)
In 1995, for example, the water supply for Mogadishu, the capital, was shut off by the United Nations humanitarian agencies until a hostage who worked for another aid organization was released.
Let's imagine the headlines if Israel followed the UN's "collective punishment model" for freeing captives.
