Posted on 06/25/2005 8:45:39 PM PDT by naturalman1975
Secret efforts to free Australian hostage Douglas Wood began in earnest after his family publicly stated that they would make a donation to an Iraqi charity.
Sources told The Sunday Age that the initial deal negotiated through Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali in late May and early June was that Mr Wood would be freed for a payment of $US100,000 ($A130,000) and not the $US25 million that was being demanded. When Mr Wood's family said the money would go to a charity, it was interpreted by the kidnappers as a coded message that money would be paid to secure his release.
It was on this basis that Australian authorities secretly planned to evacuate Mr Wood from Dubai around June 6.
But members of the team are understood to have had second thoughts. Worried about the criminal gang ending up with the money and concerned about setting a precedent, evacuation was delayed.
Circumstances contrived to make the delay manageable without alerting the kidnappers. Sheikh Hilali, who had arrived in Baghdad for the changeover, was confronted by an impossible situation on the streets of the capital, with a wave of terrorist activity making safe passage virtually impossible.
Moving Mr Wood posed an unacceptable risk to his life and the lives of others.
Sheikh Hilali said Australian diplomat Nick Warner supported this view.
The response team faced two problems: how to get Mr Wood out safely without paying his abductors and how to maintain faith with the sheikh, who had used his status as a leading Australian Muslim cleric to convinced the intermediaries that the money would be paid after Mr Wood was released, not before. The sheikh was honour-bound to pay the money and the Islamic community in Australia had also raised money as a precaution if the Wood family was unable to come up with the full amount. The sheikh could not be seen to renege on the deal.
The Sunday Age is unclear about precisely what happened next, but it is known that the sheikh helped negotiate a new changeover date - June 15 - and a drop-off location, Baghdad's Babylon Hotel. It is more than likely that his calls to the intermediaries and the calls from the intermediaries to the gang were bugged, allowing the response team to pinpoint Mr Wood's whereabouts.
The Sunday Age believes that it was decided to go in early and snatch Mr Wood before the arranged changeover. To be successful, the operation could not be carried out by Australians and it had to appear, as John Howard put it, to be a miracle, a chance discovery by Iraqi forces.
It was initially admitted that some Australian forces were present during the raid, but it was conducted by Iraqi troops who received the credit from Mr Howard for finding Mr Wood during a routine operation.
The raid on the house was not regarded as particularly dangerous, as the guards were lightly armed, knew the deal had been done and were unlikely to seriously resist. As it turned out, there was a burst of gunfire, but it is not clear who did the shooting. Nobody was killed.
It was vital that the sheikh have no prior knowledge of the operation. He had to be able to claim, as he later did, that he knew nothing about it and that he had not dishonoured his agreement to exchange Mr Wood for money or medical aid.
Publicly, it appeared that a miracle had saved Mr Wood.
One source summed it up this way: "The sheikh was going to pay the $US100,000. He was going to make the pay-off, but he never got to do it. They decided to go in early before he had a chance to deliver the money.
"There were just a couple of guys there and they put up no resistance, because they knew he was to be handed over. They found Douglas Wood with a blanket over him sitting on a bed."
Laban, do your stuff, boy.
Personally one of my biggest problems with these stories is the suggestion that Iraqi forces were used to cover up Australian involvement - I just find that really hard to believe. When you're rescuing a hostage, you use the best troops you have available, and you use your own troops first - if this was a planned rescue, I really do think the Australian SAS would have been the ones through the door - not Iraqis. If Australian involvement had to be concealed, US Special Forces might have got the job - on the basis that their larger numbers make a coincidence story more convincing than one involving Australian troops.
But I cannot see the Australian government risking Wood's life by using newly trained Iraqi troops - the political fall out of a failed rescue in that situation would be too high.
US troops, particularly special forces, wouldn't be risky - but even then, using American troops would have seemed like asking someone else to do a job you should do yourself. You'd have to have a very good reason to do it.
Lucky SOB ;-) I bet Everything feels just a little better to Mr.Woods . After a couple hundred deep breaths...
While the Iraqi Army performance seems to have been spotty to far, I have no doubt that by now they have some small teams of very highly competent Iraqis for hostage rescue missions, working with allied special forces.
This guy has a pass on stress for the rest of his life, may it be long. Think about it... every time something starts to get a little hairy, he just gets te remember that his head is still attached.
"Personally one of my biggest problems with these stories..."
What I find objectionable to these types of stories is the burning of our sources and undercover guys, as well as broadcasting techniques and tactics. Granted, this article didn't provide a great deal of detail, but it's enough to get other hostages killed and possibly some troops along with them, IMHO.
And I can believe that even in an organised rescue you might have some Iraqi involvement - partly because the Iraqis have a right to be involved in such an operation in their own country.
But there would definitely be backup.
I feel like I'm walking a somewhat fine line here - the last thing I want to do is cast aspersions on the brave Iraqi warriors who are putting their lives on the line to help their country emerge from darkness - and who certainly did a very good job in this case.
But at the same time, it just doesn't seem to me that Wood's life would have been risked in the way these reports are suggesting. If you know where the hostage is, you go in with the best people you have available. That may certainly have included some Iraqis - on a purely logistical basis, they have the language skills and there are people who may cooperate with them who would resist US or Australian troops, so you'd want them along.
At the moment I'm still inclined to the view that whatever information existed probably covered a fairly wide but discrete area - in that case you might well have a bunch of regular troops sweeping, backed up by other sitting back a little out of sight - and if those regulars see a chance and take it, and it pays off, nobody is going to complain - professional soldiers have to be ready to do that when needed. That, to me, would seem to match the facts we have - it would explain why Iraqi regulars might well have made the rescue, without the suggestion that they were just left to do it, without specialist support.
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