This diary has just sprung up from a comment I made to a thread over on dKos: a short diary by khyber900, “One of my best friends is kidnapped in Afghanistan”.

I translated a “La Repubblica” article to post there, and I’m repeating it here, in part because there are a couple of points that I find noteworthy.

A “flash” kidnapping, the work of common criminals. An action for extortion purposes, aiming to earn a pile of Italian money. This is the first trail being followed by our intelligence service, Sismi, which has a large network of agents throughout the territory.

But the explosive climate, triggered by one of the Islamic groups who are protagonists in the revolt caused by the profaning of the Koran in Guantanamo, advises against excluding the trail leading to terrorists. The Services, the Farnesina (Foreign Ministry), and Palazzo Chigi (seat of the Prime Minister’s office), newly mobilized in a kidnapping emergency, have once again activated all channels. But this time the “terrain” is more insidious and less well known than that in Iraq. And there is no Nicola Calipari to guide the operations for the liberation of Clementina Cantoni, the fourth Italian woman kidnapped in nine months.

Prime Minister Berlusconi is following the kidnapping developments closely. But it is in the offices of Gianni Letta, undersecretary to the Prime Minister’s office in charge of the Services, and in those of the Farnesina’s crisis unit, that the intelligence service’s first moves are being coordinated.

The country’s climate is explosive right now. The waves of anti-American protests which broke out after Newsweek’s revelations (probably false) on copies of the Koran thrown into toilets by U.S. soldiers have caused 15 deaths and numerous clashes with police. Infiltrated Al Qaeda terrorists are stirring up unrest in order to create problems for the Karzai government and the multinational force led by the US.

But the Islamic trail is not the primary one followed by our agents, who in the evening spoke to the Ansa news agency of criminality.

The Italian Services, after an initial evaluation, have been focusing their attention on the common crime possibility. The risk of kidnappings had been known by our agents for a long time, and in a few weeks’ time many attempts to take UN and NGO hostages had been foiled. By now, after the kidnappings of the two Simonas and Giuliana Sgrena, it is known even in the remote Afghan mountains that the Italian government is willing to pay to free its citizens. The kidnapping could thus be solved in a few hours, with the handing over of a bag full of money. If this is possible, it is the most tranquilizing hypothesis.

But there is a much more alarming hypothesis, one that leads to the Taleban. But the attack could also have been conceived within the climate of hostility surrounding the NGOs in Afghanistan, targeted by the Karzai government, which has been excluded from the management of the aid. “The humanitarian organizations are useless and wasteful,” Planning Minister Bashardost attacked not long ago. Is the kidnapping, studied in detail, a warning coming from the shady underworld of a local administration still in the hands of the warlords?

Two days ago the Minister of the Defense had sent out the alarm. “In Afghanistan,” Antonio Martino warned, “there is a situation that is still very difficult to manage. It is much worse than the Iraqi situation, and from a certain standpoint it reminds me of Bosnia in 1995.” And, faced with the umpteenth kidnapping of an Italian woman, most of the political parties are requesting a return to a climate of national unity. “I am certain,” reassures the president of the Foreign Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, Gustavo Selva, “that Intelligence and our diplomacy will succeed in bringing the volunteer worker home.”

“It is unjust to strike out at aid workers,” says an indignant Luciana Sbarbati (European Republicans), and Lusetti, the head of the Margherita group of the Chamber of Deputies, requests that the Government report immediately in Parliament. But there are those who are asking to debate our presence in Afghanistan. “Our mission,” attacks Cento of the Greens, “has failed.”

Now, the first thing that should be noted is how this “false and damaging Newsweek report” fable has really gotten around: they’re even repeating it as fact over here and, indeed, even indirectly blaming Newsweek for Clementina’s kidnapping.

The second point is that you might notice that the journalist quite matter-of-factly states that the Italian government routinely pays ransoms for its kidnapped citizens, thus possibly making them an appetizing target for kidnapping-minded criminals.

Now, I don’t know if this is true or not, because the Italian government has categorically denied this a number of times (and that would be logical, I suppose). But I find that the interesting thing about this, if nothing else, is that a mainstream journalist is actually daring to come out and contradict the government’s stance, nonchalantly stating as fact something that is the exact opposite of the official statements (Scotty McClellan, are you listening?), something that, if true (as many have said), would put the government in a bad light with the U.S. and other allies (and it was, in fact, one of the rationales some people were hypothesizing as a possible reason for the Sgrena/Calipari shooting).

So does this mean that “La Repubblica”, or journalist Alberto Mattone himself, in publicizing such a policy (even if already mentioned in the past), might be held responsible by the Italian government for encouraging possible future kidnappings of Italian citizens?

Just wondering. Maybe if they were in the U.S., they would be.