Why hostage-taking is now Iraq's new boom industry.

(From Canberra Times)

The fate of the kidnapped Iraqi humanitarian worker Margaret Hassan may depend on which group's hands she has fallen into. A staggering number of kidnappings take place in Iraq, the vast majority of them for money. Most of the victims are Iraqis, whose names never make it into the newspapers.

They are held for ransom, and generally they are released if the ransom is paid.

In the midst of all this operate a few groups of militants, the most prominent of them led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who capture their victims not to be held for ransom, but to kill them brutally in front of a camera for propaganda. The cruel …