They're worth whatever you can get for them. The Libyan entry into the equation inflated things a good deal; with oil pushing up toward $40 a barrel, Khaddafi can afford to lay out for some fairly expensive TV time. Of course, as the Abu Sayyaf are now discovering, big payoffs get attention, and raise the likelihood of people sending airplanes to drop bombs on you and troops to chase you around. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the Abu Sayyaf oldtimers are wishing they could go back to the good old days of kidnapping chinese businessmen, shaking them down for a few hundred thousand pesos, splitting the proceeds with the local military commanders, and going home without a care in the world. Not as profitable as scoring the big Libyan dollars, but a good deal safer.
I think the funniest story to come out of it was the one about the Abu Sayyaf sub-group that had $250,000 in cash that they wanted to change to pesos. Nobody in Jolo had that many pesos, so they took a boat to Zamboanga and tried to change it there. They were arrested; the cash was apparently not officially recovered.
It will be interesting to see how much, if any, of the ransom money is recovered, and who is driving around with a convoy of SUVs when the dust settles. |
