Captain Courage

[The Grand Nudger]

There is something called asymmetric warfare or Guerrilla warfare in which you use hit and run tactics and such to defy a much stronger opponent. In Central America for instance, guerrilla group are known to kidnap American tourists in order to extract ransom from their families. But who kidnaps children? (And/or very elderly people).
 
I’m asking this because hostage situations are known to be tough. These are traumatic experiences even for adults. Therefore putting little children and/or old people in this situation is definitely an act of Barbary. Meaning that there is rules to asymmetric warfare too. If you cross these lines, that makes you a terror organization.


So I would doubt the sincerity of any state or organization who fails to make this distinction right now.

Kidnapping civilians isn't an instance of the application of asymmetric warfare - it's an instance of a warcrime.  People engaged in guerrilla war might also be in the business of kidnapping, ofc.  I never saw a chapter in any SOP at any of the MOUT ranges I went to or NCOd for on proper hostage taking procedures.  Prisoners (of any kind, any age, legal or illegal) are a serious pain in the ass for conventional and guerrilla tactics.  You have to care for them - whether that's to the standards of human rights conventions or to the standards of a cynical financial transaction..and every single bit of money or manpower you spend on that, and every single hostage you deign to take, detracts from your offensive capabilities while adding a level of risk and vulnerability to your entire operation.  Even internally, your kidnappers -or- your prison guards are going to be a very different cadre from your warfighters. I'll let you in on a little secret..it's almost universal in the militaries of the world that these two groups are so disparate in both duty and temperament that they loath each other.

Say we lay aside all of the rules, all of the conventions, all of the normative right and wrong.  The functional or practical basis of those ideas is still in effect.  That we often see people resort to this does not indicate that it is a worthwhile or prudent course of action..simply that short sighted near term gains (often private gains) will override operational success in any organization that can't prevent it.  To use a particularly american example...we might see the locals shouting in joy at the news of an american..civilian or soldier, captured...but I gaurantee you they're having a very different conversation about that back at hq.  Something along the lines of getting noticed and pounded into the stone age and all of their efforts being for naught because one stupid fuck didn't have the foresight to shoot the pigdog dead and leave them to rot. There are faaaar easier ways to fund an assymetric force than to peddle hostages, and a long list of reasons why any asymmetric force would very much not want that sort of attention.