[112012123]

Interestingly, this is pretty much the split we've seen regarding terrorist hostage-taking in North Africa. While European governments have generally paid ransoms for the return of their citizens, the US Government steadfastly refuses to pay.

In early years, this generally led to better outcomes for European citizens, but as time wore on, it's come to a point where the terrorists actively avoid kidnapping Americans and prefer Europeans. Assuming the these types of hacks are explicitly targeted, I imagine we'd see a similar dynamic play out.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/world/africa/ransoming-ci...

[nickt]

I’ve traveled a lot in the Sahara and an old expression amongst the expats was “The French send troops, the Germans send money and the British send regrets”.

[nickt]

^French^Americans probably.

[omginternets]

You are ill informed:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barkhane

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Serval

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op%C3%A9ration_Licorne

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sangaris

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_%C3%89pervier

And these are just _some_ of the terrestrial missions, to say nothing of air operations.

France's Army is small, but it does most of Europe's fighting, and is generally regarded as accomplishing a lot with very little.

----

Edit: You might appreciate this mini-documentary about operation Serval. It's in English.

https://youtu.be/-QDnB6dMAb0

[ByteJockey]

Africa is probably more likely to have experienced French or British occupation than American.

[e40]

Pretty sure I heard on a NYT podcast that proxies are used for US citizens who are kidnapped. Specifically, a high-profile US citizen kidnapped by ISIS and they were returned via payment via a proxy.

[R0b0t1]

Wealthy private citizens will pay, but the government says it will not. In the case of a private citizen paying a ransom for another you run into money laundering laws and trade restrictions.