There isn't a day going by that we don't read on the news about some Italian citizen somewhere in the world being kidnapped. The numbers are quite impressive, as this search in Google proves. The cases are countless between 2005 and 2006.
Why this happens? According to the media, they're all accidental stories from the third world with nothing in common one with the other except the Italian nationality of the victims. They seem to be all criminal acts and not political or terrorist acts: their sole purpose is for the band of kidnappers to make money out of it.
From Venezuela to Nigeria (today), from Afghanistan to Yemen or Palestine, it just so happens that Italians constantly fall in the hands of kidnappers.

The truth of the matter (or, better, my opinion) is that some voice must be circulating among criminal or clandestine organizations today: the Italian government pays good.
Troubled by a scuffling and weakling political oligarchy, insecure on the international scenario, the average Italian government nowadays pays very good money to have its citizens back.
The result? Italian citizens are being kidnapped and released, more and more.

Mind you, it always happened: but now it's becoming kind of alarming. So let's ask: how and when this trend began?
Well, apparently it all began in January 2004, when Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister, and in Iraq two Italian girls working as volunteers were kidnapped. Some times after their liberation, someone leaked to the press that the Italian government, down with popularity and in a hurry for some good news, had paid one million dollars for the liberation of two girls. At a certain point Berlusconi even tried to make us believe he had pledged the million dollar from his own pockets. Which is ridiculous because the guy is a notorious closet stingy.

What is paradoxical, is that in Italy a particularly cruel law exists against kidnapping made by local criminal organizations, which 'freezes' the money of the family of the kidnapped to discourage exactly what today on an international level is happening, the diffused sensation that kidnapping and Italian citizen is rewarding.

Finally, I believe that this instructive story proves once again that when someone in charge is addicted to popularity, and would do anything to keep it, very often the highest price is paid by everyone else. The post ends here. I'm not very satisfied with it but there you go.