Being kidnapped

is not exciting. It is terrifying. All those books you have read about people being kidnapped and wooing their captors or escaping are far from reality.

Rather than days or weeks it can take years of negotiation to get people released when they are held by determined people. Even actually paying a ransom is no guarantee.

I confess I don't know anyone who has actually been kidnapped. I hope I never meet anyone who has been through such a traumatic experience. In my line of work it was always possible I would meet someone who would go on to be kidnapped. 

I have met someone who was held at gunpoint and forced to operate on a man who had a gunshot wound. The man was what we blithely label a "terrorist" and the doctor who did the work had no choice. "I am a doctor. It is my job to save lives. I also wanted to live. They might not have let me live but I had no choice."

They let him live - and they let the local people return to his clinic. When his term was up he did not try to get the new "government" of Afghanistan to extend his right to stay in the country. He left.  He felt he could do no more.

Being an aid worker is a tough job. Most of the hundreds of people I have worked with over the years have been out in the field for very short periods of time. They go to do very specific jobs. They are not like the long term people who work for organisations like Médecins Sans Frontières. MSF staff are often risking their lives in the most dangerous places in the world. They don't head back to a comfortable hotel at the end of a working day. They snatch sleep on the ground in a tent if they are lucky. They don't get enough to eat. There aren't enough supplies for them to do their jobs properly and, believe it or not, they are not always welcome. The same goes for those who are "missionaries". 

There are some, like eighty-eight year old Dr Kenneth Elliott, who spend years doing what needs to be done. He has just been released after seven years of delicate negotiations. Those negotiations could have gone wrong at any time. I don't know what the terms of his release were or whether any ransom was paid. I have no doubt that he was required to do some work for his captors.

It is going to be a long, slow road to recovery for Dr Elliott - if he does recover. The media is saying he is "in good health". I have been told, "He's okay but...." I hope for his sake, his family's sake and the sake of his colleagues in that part of the world he really is. They are on a high at the moment but it could easily come crashing down.

It is people like Dr Elliott who are really keeping peace in the world. It is the people who go out and actually help, not the diplomats who have to "rescue" them, that are doing the most good.