ALONE, unsupported, beaten and lost, Australian hostage Douglas Wood is waiting out his last full day before the expiry of the 72-hour deadline laid down by his captors for the withdrawal of Australian forces from Iraq. Manoeuvres and media messages, offers and pleas have come in a flurry, but nothing can change the hard facts of the hostage's plight: Wood is being held by a murky hard-line terror group which is blackmailing the Australian Government with its threat to take his life. The atmospherics of his captivity have undergone a stark change since he was snatched a week ago. A second video of the hostage, screened on pan-Arabic Al-Jazeera TV early this weekend, showed Wood black-eyed, his fair unruly hair shaved off, making a last appeal. The group holding him insists its demand must be met by a deadline that expires early tomorrow. The consequences of refusal were not spelled out in the video, but they seem all too clear. In a bid to appeal to the humanity of his captors, the hostage's family last night released a poignant email sent by Wood to one of his daughters in July last year. The hope is that the email will show Wood as "an affectionate family man with a genuine interest in Iraq, working there on projects for the benefit of the Iraqi people".
In the email, which breathes with love for his children, Wood reveals that he turned down a construction job in Russia to go to Iraq. "I am doing OK in Baghdad," he writes, "renovating a seven-storey building, but am having difficulty with rheumatoid arthritis, and now my vision is only 10 per cent effective." He discusses his poor health, tells his daughter how green and lush the Tigris Valley looks, and adds, in words that seem especially haunting now: "I am careful about the security arrangements in Baghdad and stay off the streets after dark." Perhaps most tellingly, in a brief aside, Wood refers to the imminent transfer of power from the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi interim government, and holds out the hope this will improve life in Baghdad. He describes the US troops as an "occupying force" - hardly the language of a convinced ideological servant of the Americans. The Wood family clearly hopes this email will stamp their brother as a humane, feeling and independent-minded man, and prove to his captors that he was not working for a Western government.