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If you're doing infrastructure for the old regime and you're not particularly attached to the old regime and a new regime shows up it's completely normal to sen

If you're doing infrastructure for the old regime and you're not particularly attached to the old regime and a new regime shows up it's completely normal to send some reps to figure out if the project is to be continued and the details thereof. Obviously there are situational judgement calls that can't be captured by slinging stupid internet rules of thumb around but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. It's not like they are a defense contractor who were supplying the people shooting at the new regime a week ago. And in this case it was a local contractor so that adds a potential layer of baggage.

titoCA321 5y ago
> The contractor was kept under house arrest, and claimed that the Ericsson manager then stopped answering his calls. "He abandoned me, he turned off the phone and disappeared." In some organizations it's also typical to throw the contractor and underlings under the bus when the project turns to sh*t.
- krisoft 5y ago
  That was the perception of the employee. Clearly the whole thing is way out of normal, but what do you expect from the manager when they are informed that one of their employees are taken hostage? Become a trained hostage negotiator and one-man-army? Later the article says: > But the report says that one of the company's partners "made arrangements" with IS to secure his release and let the company continue its work in Mosul. So no, the person wasn't abandoned. There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up there? But first thing I would expect from the manager after the kidnapping is to find a professional to handle the situation. And the professional very well might advice the manager to cut communications.
  - toss1 5y ago
    What do I expect from the manager? Not to become a hostage negotiator darmy, but to hand the phone and the matter off to a proper hostage negotiator and army. Not to just forking ghost the guy.
  - posterboy 5y ago
    > There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up there? Ali's brother runs with the crew and will keep an eye out, something like that I imagine.
JoeyBananas 5y ago
> but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. I totally disagree that Ericsson could be considered a neutral party as a foreign corporation doing business in Iraq. There is nothing neutral about doing business with a hostile foreign government. That's just not normal in any way. It's not like they had never heard of ISIS and were oblivious to all the Sharia law and violence going on in Iraq.
kodah 5y ago
ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups. This is all common intel that vendors would have and obviously intel someone in their legal department bothered to read.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups Oh piss off with the rhetoric. The Taliban did and does run Afghanistan. For a brief moment Isis was running parts of Iraq and Syria. Both are trying to perform typical state administrative functions (courts and rule of law, taxes, defense, controlling borders, etc). One way just way more violent and way less successful than the other. Neutrality is not a foriegn concept in the middle east. They just have way different concepts of "non-neutrality by association, group membership and history" than most of the west does. Edit: What constitutes a state or government of a state doesn't change because we don't like the specific policy decisions of said state or government or because said government maintains power through a level of violence we consider unacceptable.
  - kodah 5y ago
    This is an odd take. I was in Afghanistan for a total of a year. The Taliban courts that you're talking about executed a woman for having two forced relationships between two rival men, they would extract young men from their homes and make them into forced fighters, they enslaved local populaces for poppy season, just to name a few. Kidnapping and ransom is like a side business to them.
    - logifail 5y ago
      > they would extract young men from their homes and make them into forced fighters Yesterday a senior German politician floated the idea of reintroducing (or, more accurately, "reactivating") compulsory military service. It previously ran from 1956 until 2011.[0] As someone else has already pointed out, pretty much all of this stuff can be viewed as shades of grey. Apart from the facts that war is awful, and that that despite that, certain people are happy to get rich from it. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/killing-time-for-conscripts-german-military-service-is-battle-against-boredom-a-702665.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/killing-time-fo... see also https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-military-and-political-disaster-the-calamitous-errors-of-germany-s-russia-policy-a-c8b9818e-4bc2-4eb2-ac55-39e5790b29b2 https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-military-and-...
lazide 5y ago
Doing business with someone implicitly supports them. There is no way around that. As an infrastructure provider, it makes it tough because pulling out of a country is going to harm normal folks at least as much, if not more, than whoever is in charge you are refusing to do business with. But that doesn’t mean providing critical infrastructure services to literal terrorists is ok.

titoCA321 5y ago

> The contractor was kept under house arrest, and claimed that the Ericsson manager then stopped answering his calls. "He abandoned me, he turned off the phone and disappeared." In some organizations it's also typical to throw the contractor and underlings under the bus when the project turns to sh*t.

krisoft 5y ago
That was the perception of the employee. Clearly the whole thing is way out of normal, but what do you expect from the manager when they are informed that one of their employees are taken hostage? Become a trained hostage negotiator and one-man-army? Later the article says: > But the report says that one of the company's partners "made arrangements" with IS to secure his release and let the company continue its work in Mosul. So no, the person wasn't abandoned. There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up there? But first thing I would expect from the manager after the kidnapping is to find a professional to handle the situation. And the professional very well might advice the manager to cut communications.
- toss1 5y ago
  What do I expect from the manager? Not to become a hostage negotiator darmy, but to hand the phone and the matter off to a proper hostage negotiator and army. Not to just forking ghost the guy.
- posterboy 5y ago
  > There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up there? Ali's brother runs with the crew and will keep an eye out, something like that I imagine.

JoeyBananas 5y ago

> but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. I totally disagree that Ericsson could be considered a neutral party as a foreign corporation doing business in Iraq. There is nothing neutral about doing business with a hostile foreign government. That's just not normal in any way. It's not like they had never heard of ISIS and were oblivious to all the Sharia law and violence going on in Iraq.

kodah 5y ago

ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups. This is all common intel that vendors would have and obviously intel someone in their legal department bothered to read.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups Oh piss off with the rhetoric. The Taliban did and does run Afghanistan. For a brief moment Isis was running parts of Iraq and Syria. Both are trying to perform typical state administrative functions (courts and rule of law, taxes, defense, controlling borders, etc). One way just way more violent and way less successful than the other. Neutrality is not a foriegn concept in the middle east. They just have way different concepts of "non-neutrality by association, group membership and history" than most of the west does. Edit: What constitutes a state or government of a state doesn't change because we don't like the specific policy decisions of said state or government or because said government maintains power through a level of violence we consider unacceptable.
- kodah 5y ago
  This is an odd take. I was in Afghanistan for a total of a year. The Taliban courts that you're talking about executed a woman for having two forced relationships between two rival men, they would extract young men from their homes and make them into forced fighters, they enslaved local populaces for poppy season, just to name a few. Kidnapping and ransom is like a side business to them.
  - logifail 5y ago
    > they would extract young men from their homes and make them into forced fighters Yesterday a senior German politician floated the idea of reintroducing (or, more accurately, "reactivating") compulsory military service. It previously ran from 1956 until 2011.[0] As someone else has already pointed out, pretty much all of this stuff can be viewed as shades of grey. Apart from the facts that war is awful, and that that despite that, certain people are happy to get rich from it. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/killing-time-for-conscripts-german-military-service-is-battle-against-boredom-a-702665.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/killing-time-fo... see also https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-military-and-political-disaster-the-calamitous-errors-of-germany-s-russia-policy-a-c8b9818e-4bc2-4eb2-ac55-39e5790b29b2 https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-military-and-...

lazide 5y ago

Doing business with someone implicitly supports them. There is no way around that. As an infrastructure provider, it makes it tough because pulling out of a country is going to harm normal folks at least as much, if not more, than whoever is in charge you are refusing to do business with. But that doesn’t mean providing critical infrastructure services to literal terrorists is ok.