My father, Terry Anderson, was kidnapped during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s. Now, history is repeating itself as members of Lebanon’s various sects escalate tit-for-tat abductions.

By Sulome Anderson, The Atlantic, Sept. 6, 2013

[....] His English isn’t good, so my fixer does most of the talking.

“The Sunni people are acting like thugs,” the man says. “They’re trying to make a sectarian war. They’re the ones who are kidnapping and killing people, throwing bombs, eating hearts.” [....]

The Jaafar clansman, who for obvious reasons prefers to remain anonymous, says his family is humane in their treatment of hostages.

“I can assure you that people copy human rights from us,” he says proudly. “You can ask the men we kidnapped. They will say we treated them as if they were at home.”

I ask when these retaliatory kidnappings are going to end, or whether he thinks they’ve snowballed out of control.

“Who knows when it’s going to stop?” he says circumspectly. “After the men from Arsal kidnapped one of us, they handed him over to the FSA in Syria…there’s no government in Lebanon, forget about Syria [....]