Four months ago, video footage on YouTube, which required
huge ransom for two Japanese men captured by Islamic terrorists, precipitated
Japanese people into horror. That was the moment when the Japanese realized
that they had become designated targets of Islamic terrorists. After failure of
rescuing effort, Shinzo Abe administration embarked on verification of whether
the measures they took had been correct. The conclusion of the government-led
committee was “nothing was wrong.”
The report of the committee divided the process of dealing
with the incident three periods. The first period was from last August when the
first Japanese hostage was missed in Syria to December 3rd when the
wife of the second hostage received e-mail from Islamic State. During the time,
the report recognized that the government tried to persuade the second hostage
not to visit Syria to rescue the first hostage.
The second period was from December 3rd to
January 20th when IS uploaded the video of two hostages. The report
found no problem in Abe’s policy speech in Cairo on January 17th
that announced $200 million of support to the countries fighting Islamic State
of Iraq and Levant. While the government could not deny a possibility of
kidnapping by IS, the report recognized the importance of delivering
humanitarian support to Middle East.
For the third period after the video was uploaded, the
report avoided blaming the government not making direct deal with kidnappers.
It concluded that the government did its best taking advantage of every channel
with tribal leaders in Arab world.
In the video, the kidnappers referred to Abe’s Cairo speech
as hostility against IS. It was obvious that the speech gave the terrorists
crucial momentum for blackmailing the Japanese. The reason why the report has
no evaluation on that point was because the committee was mostly consisted by
bureaucrats with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Police Agency or Cabinet
Office, although few experts on the regional issues were involved in. The verification
has not objectively been done by the third party.
The report recommended more efforts to collect information
and regulation of traveling abroad to unsecure region. The bureaucrats always
take advantage of their failure for expansion of their organizational power, as
seen in the reconstruction from Great East Japan Earthquake. They got further
power to regulate people in foreign travel and control information inconvenient
to them.
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