 |
Back
to Current Controversies: History Behind the Headlines
America’s
First Hostage Crisis
In 1979, Iranian students invaded
the American embassy in Tehran and held American diplomats and
others hostage for 444 days. To secure their freedom, President
Jimmy Carter agreed in his last days in office to release $8 billion
in frozen Iranian assets.
In Lebanon, during the mid-1980s,
pro-Iranian extremists kidnapped and held hostage some two dozen
American journalists and teachers. In one bloody incident, militants
abducted a U.S. marine lieutenant colonel, hanged him, and broadcast
videotaped pictures of his lifeless body on television. Despite
his pledge never to negotiate with terrorists, President Ronald
Reagan agreed to sell weapons to Iran in return for the hostages'
release. Two were freed, but they were soon replaced when extremists
took new American hostages.
After invading Kuwait in August
1990, Iraq announced that 10,000 Americans and other Western citizens
trapped in Iraq and Kuwait would be scattered among Iraqi military
bases, oil production facilities, and industrial installations
as human shields against Western and Arab attack. At first, President
George Bush refused to use the "h"-word--"hostage"--to
describe these trapped Westerners; but soon he acknowledged that
he too faced a hostage crisis. Ultimately, Iraq freed the Western
hostages, apparently in an attempt to initiate negotiations with
the United States and its allies.
Few political issues have distressed
Americans more in recent years than the taking of hostages. Both
the Carter and Reagan administrations suffered severe political
damage as a result of their handling of hostage crises. Today,
Americans continue to debate how best to deal with hostage situations.
Should the United States negotiate with kidnappers? Should we
pay ransom and make political concessions to secure the hostages'
freedom? Or should the country flatly refuse to deal with kidnappers?
These questions are not new. Even
before George Washington became president, the United States was
confronted with a hostage crisis. The episode began in 1785, when
an American schooner Maria, sailing off the coast of Portugal,
was boarded by Algerian pirates. Its captain and five crew members
were taken prisoners. Then a second American ship, the brig Dauphin
was captured, and its 15-member crew was taken to Algiers and
enslaved. Several hostages were put to work as domestic servants;
another was forced to care for the Dey of Algiers's lion. Much
of the time the hostages were kept in leg irons, chained to pillars
or locked in a rat-infested prison. Six Americans died of bubonic
plague; one went insane.
During the late eighteenth century,
three small north African states--Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis--preyed
on merchant ships sailing in the Mediterranean, seizing their
crews and cargoes and holding both for ransom. Many European countries
paid tribute to what were called the Barbary states to insure
that their ships would be unmolested, but Americans did not. Major
powers like Britain and France tolerated the "Barbary pirates"
because they exacted high costs on the the shipping of potential
competitors, such as Denmark, Holland, Portugal, Sweden, and the
United States.
In a bid to free the American
hostages, Thomas Jefferson, then Minister to France, offered to
pay $200 ransom for each American prisoner. This sum was well
below the going rate of $1,600 per hostage. As a result, the hapless
prisoners languished in captivity. Over the next eight years,
Algerian pirates seized more than a hundred hostages from a dozen
captured American ships.
Finally, in 1795, the State Department
dispatched a poet, Joel Barlow, to negotiate for the hostages'
release. To gain the captives' freedom, the United States agreed
to pay $800,000 plus annual tribute--and to provide the Dey of
Algiers with a brand-new 36-gun frigate. In 1797, the hostages
were freed and sailed to Philadelphia, where they were greeted
by cheering crowds.
Although the hostages were now
free, the story was not yet over. After the military ruler of
Tripoli learned that the Dey of Algiers had received an American
frigate, he demanded a ship of his own. When the United States
refused to accede to his demand, the Bawshaw of Tripoli seized
an American merchant ship and ordered the flag of the U.S. consulate
in Tripoli cut down.
President Thomas Jefferson responded
by imposing a naval blockade of Tripoli. In 1803, however, the
U.S. frigate Philadelphia ran aground off the coast of Tripoli
and its 307-member crew was captured. In a daring raid on February
16, 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Jr., and a small band of
sailors boarded the Philadelphia and set the ship afire. But the
Philadelphia's crew remained imprisoned, and Tripoli's leader
demanded $200,000 ransom for their release.
The stage was now set for one
of the most colorful episodes in American military history. In
1805, William Eaton, the American consul to Tunis, led a ragtag
"army" consisting of eight marines, two navy midshipmen,
and some three hundred Europeans and Muslims on a fifty day, 520-mile
march from Egypt and successfully stormed the Tripolitan city
of Derna. Eaton's stunning victory led Tripoli to sign a peace
treaty with the United States. In return, the United States agreed
to pay $60,000 for the release of the Philadelphia's crew.
It was not until 1815 that the
United States successfully ended North African piracy. In that
year, a fleet of ten American ships under the command of Stephen
Decatur threatened to bombard Algiers. The threat worked. The
North African states agreed to release American prisoners without
ransom and to cease all interference with American shipping.
|
|
