alI stand corrected. Yesterday's "Song Kin-Shi", the second Korean hostage killed by the Taliban as reported in Chinaview is more likely Shim Sung-min, as reported by Reuters today [1] In this latest war zone where terror keeps down the numbers of the press and cell phones suffice for information from disembodied voices, one may expect such misperceptions and transpositions in the reporting of proper nouns.
Shim Sung-min turns out an IT professional who was working as a volunteer with Saemmul Church and thinking about going on to graduate school when the Taliban made him a part of world history.
The Taliban's next move: another deadline, this latest for Wednesday, August 1 at 3:30 a.m. [2] It's coming on 9 p.m. in Kabul, so the hostages will have another and possibly sleepless six hours before the next slaughter.
Reuters also reports this moning on how the hostages' families have been surviving this cruel ordeal in which deadlines have been set and passed several times without finality [3]
For all who have ever, even once, felt themselves impotent and helpless in the face of disaster or threat of any kind, this crisis may suggest how states feel it. Cooperation fully empowers the Taliban to carry out more of the same; refusal sacrifices innocents. The Taliban, who most likely will blame the Afghani government and the allied coalition for murdering their hostages, may themselves not have the ability to reconsider their course (perhaps by abandoning the hostages), which decision may betray relatives in the government's prisons.
In Guerrilla, Walter Laqueur points out the advantages of a surrounding force leaving its enemies a line of retreat in ambush, the idea being to compel other than a vicious fight to the death on the part of an entire outmaneuvered party. Some will choose escape and reduce the threat in the immediate kill zone overall.
Unfortunately, the psychology having to do with social obligations and beliefs about the nature of belief at Lal Masjid, Nahr al-Bared, and here make compromise, retreat, and surrender equally impossible.
At the mosque and in the Palestinian camp, faith in martyrdom may have provided its hopeful note, whether one sees that thinking as upside-down or not, but with the holding of hostages, now 21 of 23 initially detained, and no gun battle in sight, martrdom, other than Christian martyrdom, may seem as far off as appeals for the return of the humanity of the captors.
1. "Killed South Korean hostage was active volunteer." Reuters, July 31, 2007.
2. "Afghans recover body of slain Korean hostage." Reuters, July 31, 2007.
3. "'Life in Hell' for Korean Hostages' families." Reuters, July 31, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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