i mentioned i was in new york over the weekend, i guess i didn't mention why. mrs. noz has a conference there. she goes to it every year. last year it was in san francisco. i really like it when my wife has conferences. she has to work, i get to goof off. the new york ones are a bit less exciting for me, i go to new york all the time for work, but i still had a good time, even if i wanted to rush back for the film festival here in philly.
anyway, last year in san francisco i remember watching cnn. i only seem to watch broadcast news from hotel rooms. anyway, the big story at that time last year was an american hostage. there were a bunch of hostages back then. so while i was in new york at one time i thought, hey, i guess that's one sign of improvement in iraq, the insurgents don't seem to be taking foreign hostages anymore.
so then i got back and saw two separate reports that insurgents had kidnapped a pakistani diplomat and an american contractor. plus, the anniversary passed for matt maupin, one of last year's hostages who has still not been released (though it's not clear that he's still alive)
when searching for links for this post, i also learned that a french reporter has been held since january, three rumanian journalists, plus their iraqi-american translator have been held since march 28th, two egyptian engineers since march 19, a jordanian businessman since march 5, a brazilian engineer since january 19, and a turkish business man abducted on january 13. of course, there was also the famous case of giuliana sgrena, who was taken into captivity in february 2005.
these abductions seem to be taking place around the same time of year as they did last year. does anyone know why that would be? is the timing just a coincidence? is springtime in iraq a particularly good time to snatch people? or have these things been going on all along and i just didn't notice until i was sitting in our new york hotel sunday morning?
in any case, the "kidnapping season" theory is not perfect, not all current abductees were kidnapped over the past few months. as i mentioned, maupin was seized a year ago, and there's also aban elias, an iraqi-american engineer who was captured last may. but both of them can be dismissed as holdovers from last year's season.
but there are also few current abductees who were taken in november 2004: a lebanese businessman, a lebanese-american contractor, an american businessman and a filipino businessman. all were kidnapped in three separate incidents in the same month. so maybe there is a brief kidnapping season in november, and then another one for a few months around the spring.
