Iraq By Andy Dykes

So it happened. After weeks of waiting, and a short lived escape, Ken Bigley was finally pinned down and felt the blade of a knife against his neck. It was as close to inevitable as anything could be, given the recent trend for sacrificing hostages in Iraq. But it brought the atrocious nature of such events closer to home that this time it was a family minded Briton at the centre of the ordeal. Maybe that's a hint at the slight and necessary xenophobia that permeates the British press at times of international crisis; interest in and concern for our own.

Maybe it's because he looked and sounded like someone I work with, or one of my friends' Dads, or Dad's friends, or whatever. Perhaps it's that I know where he came from and can picture him in his local, sharing a pint with his friends. But actually, that Ken Bigley's tragic death has had such an impact is down to none of these reasons. Or, moreover, not as much as it is this: Ken Bigley became the unwilling figurehead of British political interest in Iraq. To his captors, he represented the troops: their war in and occupation of Iraq. He represented the incarceration of the Iraqi women that his captors wanted freed.

In their using him as a bargaining tool with the British government, he came to represent that government. And in doing that, he came to represent all of us, because it is in voting effectively, voting ineffectively or not voting at all that the British public elected this government who went to war.

Now I'm not going to claim that we should feel guilty about this; to trace this event back to the day that we did or did not slip a piece of paper into a ballot box would be ridiculous. But perhaps it goes some way to explaining the affect that this event has had on Britain as a nation.

But as the British government always says: We do not negotiate with terrorists. And all of a sudden it's just one man alone against the extreme activities of Islamic fundamentalism. Ken Bigley doesn't represent someone or something to be negotiated with any more. And in the instance of this development, there is nothing that either side can gain, and there is only one possible outcome.

So as the fundamentalists prepare to perform their brutal operation, Ken Bigley is simply an innocent man, alone in the violent turmoil of pseudo religious, pseudo political conflict. And as such, the opposing sides, their aims and concerns boil down to these:

1. An extreme group of Islamic fundamentalists willing to go to any lengths to have their countrymen freed from the captivity of an occupying force, thus increasing the number of those extremists who will go to any lengths to push the occupying force out of Iraq and, in turn, overthrow the government put in place by said occupying force, etc, etc.

2. A middle aged man from Liverpool who wanted to see his family again.

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