The suggestion is one of the many crucial issues in a groundbreaking research of Louise Richardson, and incisively critically analyzed in her bestseller "What Terrorists Want" (John Murray, U.K., 2006).
If the terrorists' goal is either non-negotiable or negotiable corresponds to the issue of whether or not the essential liberty or freedom given to democratic societies can be curtailed.
Political goals can be negotiated as illustrated in the case of both the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) where the standing bloc for ultimate solution is the interpretation of the "ancestral domain" provision in the Constitution.
However the recent kidnapping-for-ransom case involving ABS-CBN news anchor Cecelia 'Ces' Oreña Drilon and her three companions assumed a somewhat "strange" dimensions, where the negotiators Indanan Mayor Alvarez Isnaji and his son Haider are now some of the principal suspects in the nine-day ordeal suffered by the victims.
In the case of al-Qaeda where the final goal is the establishment of their religious faith worldwide, negotiation is remote and the dialogue preferred is the mass communication where their ideology could be disseminated to a bigger audience.
More often than not, by acceding to their demands the terrorists' egos are inflated and thus achieve their objective for publicity.
As Louise Richardson pointedly put it, "Terrorism is an attractive tactic because it is easy and because it makes the weak seem stronger," adding that knowing terrorists' essential weakness, they "enhance societal resilience and calibrate its reaction to the actual risk it faces, it will make the task of the terrorists more difficult".
In the case of the ABS-CBN news team, the threat of beheading them and the stringent deadline condition and only to extend the same definitely showed that the brigands' ultimate goal was the ransom demanded.
The revelation that some of the terrorists were teenaged "warriors" is another puzzling factor which can easily be deduced that they were recent recruits to stage the operation to fulfill the "mission" given them by the masterminds.
If indeed, the ABS-CBN news team's purpose of going to Sulu was to seek Abu Sayyaf leader Radulan Sahiron for interview, how would one explain that the said brigand was never heard of as the usual reaction of said group in previous covert or stealth operations was to show their invulnerability?
Now we have the portraits of the "negotiators" as the kidnappers themselves and here the complexities lie for the intelligence and investigative agencies of the government to unravel the mystery.
It must be stressed that in the case of news anchor Ces Oreña Drilon and her team, the primary and sole demand was ransom varying in amount as the days went on, aside from "no politician" condition shall be the negotiators except for the terrorists' choice.
Ironically, the choice made by them happened to be a politician-Indanan Mayor Alvarez Isnaji, well, a gubernatorial aspirant for Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) come August elections!
Probably, from the point of view of the bandits by giving preference to Mayor Alvarez Isnaji as the negotiator, his candidacy could be greatly enhanced if and when the demand for ransom shall succeed. And they did get their share!
If the reports about the share taken by Mayor Isnaji from the ransom money can be validated by competent evidence, then the publicity generated would reduce the Abu Sayyaf Group into plain and common criminals-their ideology is lost and bin Laden's al-Qaeda and Indonesian-grown Jemaah Islamiyah terror group would not be disheartened by the negative picture of their adherents.
It was a miscalculated act by the group, which would alienate them from their community.
The terrorists' attention to the details of their script was overwhelmed by greed and nothing more.
They even failed to cry out their grievances as it was usual for them to recite the litany of sins of the heathen government.
On a number of occasions, they always projected their goal to create a in southern Mindanao, stretching as far as southern Thailand.
The claim of the security forces that there is a crisis of leadership among the remnants of the Abu Sayyaf Group is not implausible. However, we cannot be certain if the same enterprise involving high-profiled journalists shall be repeated in the near future given the bad publicity not only for the outlaws but the negotiators as well.
