Via ransom for kidnap victims:

BAMAKO, Mali — The cash filled three suitcases: 5 million euros.

The German official charged with delivering this cargo arrived here aboard a nearly empty military plane and was whisked away to a secret meeting with the president of Mali, who had offered Europe a face-saving solution to a vexing problem.

Officially, Germany had budgeted the money as humanitarian aid for the poor, landlocked nation of Mali.

In truth, all sides understood that the cash was bound for an obscure group of Islamic extremists who were holding 32 European hostages, according to six senior diplomats directly involved in the exchange.

The suitcases were loaded onto pickup trucks and driven hundreds of miles north into the Sahara, where the bearded fighters, who would soon become an official arm of Al Qaeda, counted the money on a blanket thrown on the sand. The 2003 episode was a learning experience for both sides. Eleven years later, the handoff in Bamako has become a well-rehearsed ritual, one of dozens of such transactions repeated all over the world…

$66 million was paid to the terrorists just in 2013 and the going rate for an European has soared from $200,000 in 2003 to $10 million in 2013. Its good business.  Criminal gangs appear to do the actual job – the kidnappings – while third party cut-outs arrange the ransom, everyone getting a cut, of course (and I’ll bet government officials in some of these Third World back waters also get a pay off to ensure the local constabulary stays out of the way).

As for why its Europeans – Europe has money; Europe is closer, Europeans are nitwit enough to travel to Muslim lands under the impression – carefully fostered by the European Ruling Class – that Muslim societies are just swell and, of course, it is highly unlikely that an European Special Forces soldier will provide a bullet for the kidnapper instead of the ransom money.  This is partially because European military forces are laughably small these days but mostly because no one in Europe has the will to fight.  As this is just on the 100th anniversary of the First World War, I think it worthwhile to note that the war – and WWII – seems to have killed the European strain which had any spirit, at all.

It is disgraceful and it is also unstoppable, as long as the terrorists don’t get too greedy.  It’ll only stop if the terrorists get better sources of funding, or have enough for the needs for some considerable period of time. There is zero chance that a forceful action by Europe – or even just a flat refusal to pay – will happen.  To be sure, the flat refusal would result in the deaths of those who are currently captive – and likely one or two more sets as the terrorists test resolve – but once you stop paying, eventually the kidnappers stop kidnapping.  But the craven Ruling Class of Europe won’t do that – they won’t fight because they’ve got no guts, and they won’t stop paying because they don’t want to risk popular outrage as You Tube videos of European kidnap victims getting beheaded become common.

Absent Divine intervention, Europe is doomed – unless there is a reconversion of that continent to Christianity in sufficient numbers to control things, Europe will just continue to flabbily go down to destruction.  A people which is bribing the barbarians to peace – as the Romans started to do in the 3rd century – is a people that is doomed.