We have become inured to images of suicide bombings. Televised warnings by Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders no longer make breaking news. Gun battles in Gaza, Beirut or Baghdad are now dismissed as routine.

Yet one tool in the terrorist armoury of the Middle East can still grip Western attention. Hostage-taking, one of the oldest and most distressing tactics, has been used effectively to horrify the public and put pressure on governments to win concessions for various causes.

Nearly a year ago, when five Britons were abducted in broad daylight from a finance ministry building in Baghdad, the same procedure seemed likely.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, however, has succeeded in imposing a news blackout around the case. It insists that efforts to free the men could be harmed if the process is conducted in the glare of publicity. It is not even clear who took the men and why.

Now is a good time to ask whether the tactic is working. So far there is little evidence that the efforts under way by British hostage negotiators in Baghdad have had much effect.

While kidnapping might appear to the outside world as the act of a crazed extremist, it is often the work of sober-minded operatives who regard human life like any commodity worth trading.

Britain has a standard policy of not negotiating with terrorists, though occasionally terrorists do free their captives without being rewarded in kind.

Alan Johnston, the BBC’s Gaza correspondent, was released after 114 days after intensive efforts by his employers and a global publicity campaign. Another British journalist, Richard Butler, was freed in Basra after Iraqi troops stumbled across him.

Those examples are revealing. First, Britain’s presence and influence in Iraq has diminished greatly since the five men were abducted. Any serious efforts to free them must be carefully coordinated with the Iraqi Government and the US.

Religious figures, such as Lord Carey of Clifton and Canon Andrew White, can influence Islamic religious figures in a way that secular leaders cannot. In some cases kidnappers are looking for a way out of a deadlock and the intervention of nonpolitical mediators can help.

The other lesson is that publicity can be effective. In the case of Mr Johnston, it put pressure on the militant Hamas group to force his abductors to free him.

Finally, having the case reported openly can be a source of comfort to the families and the hostage victims themselves.

The only contact we have had so far with the kidnap victims was in two brief video clips. In one, a man calling himself “Jason” said: “I feel we have been forgotten.”

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