#OpFOQ Learns One Hostage Is Alive

BREAKING, March 27: In the three days since the launch of #OpFOQ, a human rights effort to secure the release of two dozen Qatari hostages held (it is believed) in Iraq or at least to learn if the hostages are alive and well, there is progress to report.

At this hour, it was learned that one of the Qatari hostages, seen below, is alive.

#BREAKING // after great work and pressure from the crew of #OpFOQ #ProofOfLife for one hostage is exclusively shared with us. pic.twitter.com/N5rsrA7Asf

— #OpFOQ (@Op_FOQ) March 27, 2017

The #OpFOQ campaign’s organizers caution its followers and supporters that “We are being told to not reveal identity and we cannot confirm he is a part of the royal family.” (It has since been confirmed that the hostage is a member of the Qatari royal family, the Al Thani family. See below.)

The campaign organizers write: “Our hearts ache for all the other families. We would like to dissuade people from starting to speculate as to the health of the remaining hostages. That will only cause pain. We applaud all parties involved in making this first step possible and will make sure we do not risk anyone’s security or lives.”

The hostage’s condition and whereabouts are still being withheld. The conditions of the other Qatari hostages, and even the precise number of hostages, remain unknown at this hour. Many families who have not learned anything about their sons, brothers, husbands, fathers for more than a year still are in the tortured dark about their loved ones.

The operation’s official Twitter account, #OpFOQ, has posted fifty updates since its launch on March 24; the account has acquired a following large enough to spawn a rebuttal hashtag: “#QuestionOp_FOQ.” This is because the campaign has been seen by more than ten million Twitter and Facebook users in its first three days.

#OpFOQ is an informational and social media operation designed to learn what can be learned about the twenty-five hostages, who were taken prisoner in December 2015 by members of the Imam al-Ali Brigade of the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, an Iran-backed Shi’a paramilitary force, controls much of the desert region of southern and western Iraq, where the kidnapping took place

Today brought the first break in the story, which has many moving parts behind the scenes. A consultancy, Global Strategies Council, Inc., was retained by a member of the Qatari royal family, for $2 million to “conduct research focused on learning the whereabouts of members of the Qatari Royal family currently held in Iraq,” according to a Department of Justice filing first reported last week in Politico. #OpFOQ was not created by that company, but the company, having seen the #Backlash and #FreeRaif social media campaigns, reached out to those behind them, which thus inspired #OpFOQ.

Hence this email from Global Strategies to #OpFOQ, posted on the #OpFOQ Twitter feed:

#BREAKING We can confirm that the heavily redacted proof of life is from one of the members of the Qatar Royal family. #ProofOfLife #OpFOQ pic.twitter.com/5zDsSbXte4

— #OpFOQ (@Op_FOQ) March 27, 2017

The men were kidnapped in December 2015, and since April 2016, when two of the hostages were freed, the missing men have been absent from the world’s headlines and attention as well, despite the fact that a handful of the hostages are members of the royal family of Qatar. Families are missing sons, brothers, husbands, fathers. The men were not taken by an official government entity, so groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been bystanders as the mystery deepened each day.

The men were sportsmen—falconers—who crossed the Saudi Arabian-Iraqi border with government-issued permits and their birds, and they set up camp in Iraq’s remote southern province, Al Muthanna. December is training season for the falcons because December is the breeding season for the houbara bustard, a turkey-like bird found in Central Asia that the falcons hunt.

Thus, a large falconry party of twenty-seven men and the birds they were training seen in that part of the world in December is nothing out of the ordinary. What followed was.

Al Muthanna is desert, sparsely populated, and only nominally governed by the politicians in Baghdad. The Imam al-Ali Brigade of the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, an Iran-backed Shi’a paramilitary force, controls much of the desert region of southern and western Iraq, where the kidnapping took place.

Between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. on the night of December 16, 2015, while the group slept, a convoy of about 100 armed men in pickup trucks and vans descended on the hunting party’s camp, near Busaya in the Samawa desert, and took the entire group hostage. Not a shot was fired. The hunters who were taken hostage were almost all from Qatar, among them six members of the Qatari royal family, the Al Thani family. The fate of the falcons remains unknown.

No group claimed responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping, and nine hostages were released or escaped within days—one Kuwaiti, two Saudis and six Qataris. None of the nine were members of the ruling Al Thani family of Qatar; all were servants of or helpers to the falconry party.

Ransom notes have appeared in the Iraqi media every so often, but their veracity is usually questioned. It appears that the hostages are to be used as “bargaining chips in negotiations to secure the release detainees held by armed factions in Syria,” but the incident took place fifteen months ago.

It is believed that the hostages may be held in small groups scattered among small villages near Basra, Iraq. Since the night of the kidnapping, December 16, 2015, only two hostages have been released: one member of the Al Thani family and a Pakistani aide who were both freed in April 2016. It is not known where the remaining hostages are being kept, or even if all twenty-five are still alive. They may be held in various Iraqi prisons.

Qatar’s government has attempted negotiations with Iraq’s government, but neither entity has the ear or allegiance of the group or groups that took the falconers hostage. Iran probably does.

For the last eleven months, this is where matters stood … until March 24. On that date, an announcement was published on Pastebin by the creators of the #OpFOQ campaign: “We call on #Anonymous and all Human Rights activists from the west, from the U.S. and from the whole of the Middle East to join in … while the Arab Summit is taking place, 23-29 March.”

The annual conference of the Arab League, the Arab Summit, meets this week, from March 23 to March 29, in Amman, Jordan. #OpFOQ was launched on March 24 to direct the conference’s attention to this mass kidnapping and ultimately to earn the freedom of the two dozen Qataris held against their will in Iraq. A media campaign centered on the #OpFOQ Twitter account and a post on Medium. (Full disclosure: I wrote the post) have been re-Tweeted several thousand times and seen by more than a million people in just the first 24 hours.

* * * *
#OpFOQ’s public coordinator and I appeared on The AnonUK Radio Show to discuss the case and #OpFOQ on March 26. Here is a link to the recording: “#t0pg3arliv3 – @AnonUKRadio – @Mark_S_Aldrich @xugla & @RayJoha2 @Op_FOQ.”

____________________________________________

Follow The Gad About Town on Facebook! Subscribe today for daily facts (well, trivia) about literature and history, plus links to other writers on Facebook.

Follow The Gad About Town on Instagram!