printThe tale of American hostage Kayla Mueller, who died recently while in the custody of ISIS, gets increasingly curious by the minute.
While a veteran intelligence reporter at CNN stated today that he very much doubted ISIS would have “given” Mueller to one of its fighters as some sort of a prize bride, this is indeed what “intelligence officials” are telling CNN.
Moreover, Ms. Mueller, it would appear, was not officially employed by any “serious organizations” such as “Doctors Without Borders” or the “Norwegian Refugee Council, UNHCR.” “Doctors Without Borders just doesn’t take anyone who turns up at the border. It’s a difficult thing to get a role like that,” explained Janine Di Giovanni, an award-winning, experienced correspondent.
During the Bosnian War, there were a lot of so-called freelance NGO people who showed up and wanted to help. Some of them did a lot of good. Some of them brought goods into the besieged cities, like Sarajevo and Mustar. And some of them, frankly, were nut jobs that were more hazardous on the ground than helpful.
Instead of hysterically romanticizing Ms. Mueller, as media have done (so far), Di Giovanni counters with a sober, sensible appraisal:
I thought she was incredibly young, incredibly naive, very inexperienced. I thought she was passionate and warm and well- meaning and well-intentioned. But to be honest, I left from meeting her incredibly worried. I thought, this is someone that’s going to get into trouble.
I’ve been working in war zones for more than 20 years and so my intuitions about when it’s right to cross into borders, when it’s not, are pretty well honed. That doesn’t prevent me from getting into trouble either. It’s just, I was very surprised at how naive she was, at how almost excited to be going into Syria.
I was with another colleague and she was with her Syrian friend, who’s also a friend of mine, an activist. And while it’s really touching to see people that are that devoted to a cause, as her mother said, peace and to try to bring peace to the world, I think it also has to be pointed out that war in places like Syria are not the place to go when you are very inexperienced, if you don’t have hostile environment training, if you’ve never been in war zones before.
Senseless in Syria? So it would appear.