Daniel Pearl did a dumb thing. The Wall Street Journal reporter and South Asia bureau chief took unnecessary risks, and it cost him his life. But his death may serve a higher purpose–a warning to all employees of U.S. companies abroad that they are not only targets of terrorist organizations, but that money is not always the payoff for many kidnap schemes.

Indeed, since Sept. 11, the risk of the kidnapping and murder of U.S. executives has increased alarmingly. While globetrotting executives are aware of the high threat of being kidnapped in Latin America–where kidnap for ransom schemes are a robust, well-orchestrated enterprise–they at least know that if they're taken, they're likely to survive the experience. Money talks in places like Colombia and Mexico. But in the Middle East, Pakistan and the southern Philippines, areas rife with Muslim extremist groups tied to Al Queda and the Taliban, abduction can sometimes mean death.

Not that there have been many politically motivated kidnappings other than that of Pearl, who was seized Jan. 23 as he waited outside a restaurant in Karachi for an exclusive interview with Muslim extremists. His captors insisted their objective was to compel the United States to improve living conditions for Taliban prisoners held at a U.S. Army base in Cuba. But their real motive seems to have been publicity for their cause, which they undeniably achieved. And admittedly, that objective becomes a certainty when you grab a member of the media.