One of the perils of working in or even travelling to the Middle East and Central Asia is that there is a high risk of being taken hostage by autocratic states or terrorist groups. Peter Reynolds, 79, and Barbie, his 75-year-old wife, are the latest Brits to find this out the hard way. The couple, who have been running projects in Afghanistan for 18 years, were detained by the Taliban in Afghanistan on 1 February. Their children have heard nothing from them for a fortnight.
The grim reality is that they might be left languishing as hostages for some time. A former colleague of mine at the New Lines Institute, Elizabeth Tsurkov, has been a hostage of either the Iranian regime or a proxy force of that regime for over 700 days. Elizabeth is a tremendous professional and one of the world’s great scholars. It is an outrage that the Iranian regime kidnapped her and continues to hold her hostage.
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