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March 6, 2008

Expert addresses whether governments should talk to terrorists

At what juncture, if any, is it appropriate for governments to enter into a dialogue with terrorist groups?

That depends on a number of factors, said a visiting lecturer, including how one defines terrorism, what the pre-conditions of a negotiation would entail and what ends are sought by the government in question.

“This lecture does not provide answers, but a comparative framework,” said scholar Aaron Edwards of the International Conflict Research at the University of Ulster. “But we can look at one case study of Northern Ireland and how the Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army) was neutralized after more than a 40-year struggle, to see if there are lessons to learn around the world.”

Edwards spoke last month on “Talking to Terrorists: Political Violence and the Peace Process in the Contemporary World,” a lecture sponsored by Pitt’s history department and global studies program.

“Even though instances of negotiated settlements may seem to be increasing in recent years, there still are very few examples where conflict resolution has worked with groups that use violence and terrorism as a primary weapon,” Edwards said.

However, he said, the Northern Ireland peace process provides clear empirical evidence of a liberal democratic state, Great Britain, entering into peace negotiations with a terrorist group, the Provisional IRA, a non-state paramilitary organization that employed violence as a tactic to advance a political cause, in this case to establish an Irish state independent of British rule.

“What is terrorism? There’s a lack of consensus among scholars,” Edwards maintained. Part of the difficulty in defining terrorism is that there is no agreement on a basis for determining when the use of violence is legitimate, if ever. More and more, terrorism and terrorists have become pejorative terms in that they denote illegitimacy, Edwards said.

Some academicians classify terrorism as the use of violence to create an aura of fear, not only to individual victims of violent acts, but to a wider audience, in order to undermine the legitimacy of a government, said Edwards. Others define terrorism as a technique used by national movements against civilians, who are the most vulnerable sector of a society, or as a weapon that could be adopted by a wide array of people who form a loose network.

Post-Sept. 11 definitions tend to limit terrorism to violence perpetrated by non-state actors, which implies that states only can perpetrate terrorism in rare instances, such as Nazism or Stalinism, he said.

“There is a conceptual difference between conflicts in the post-Cold War period and conflicts post-9/11, especially in light of debates on the function of the state and its monopoly over violence in the contemporary world,” Edwards said.

For purposes of his discussion, Edwards settled on the definition of terrorism as a strategy, method or tactic used by non-state actors to effect change, or to gain power or influence.

“The argument crops up all the time: If states negotiate with terrorists, they risk granting them some legitimacy by their actions,” Edwards said. “Even exploratory negotiations can set a dangerous precedent and legitimize terror groups.”

The common wisdom is that states instead should utilize judicial processes and superior force to deal with terrorist groups, he said.

But in the case of Northern Ireland, all efforts at peace had failed prior to the opening of negotiations under John Major’s and Tony Blair’s governments in the 1990s, which culminated in the 1998 Belfast Agreement.

That agreement was signed by both the British and Irish governments, endorsed by voters in both Irish states and by the major political parties, except the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). “Even then, it took almost another 10 years for the Provisional IRA and DUP to reach a formal agreement. The peace process does not happen overnight,” Edwards said.

He added, “Northern Ireland had been a lost cause before the British government finally entered dialogue,” dating back to the late-1960s with the emergence of the Provisional IRA, whose goal was to overthrow the Northern Ireland government, combine the territory with the Republic of Ireland and replace the two with a sovereign Irish state.

“From both the loyalists and the ‘Provos,’ as they’re called, emerged terrorism, bombings, shootings, propaganda,” Edwards said. The British army then was called in to occupy both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland under the arguments that the government needed to protect its citizens and that unchecked violence eventually could affect British national security.

“From the 1970s, the IRA wanted the Brits out of Ireland,” Edwards said. “But the argument from the British side is that the 1 million Protestants living there had to be protected, so it’s a strategy for security, to lessen vulnerability and to ensure economic success.”

A number of false starts to the peace process took place over the next 40 years, prior to 1998 when the British military and the IRA paramilitary dimensions of the conflict came to an end, Edwards said, although he noted that sporadic violence continues to be a fact of life in Northern Ireland.

Edwards maintained that negotiation, bolstered by the third-party support of the U.S. government, was the only method whereby a resolution could have been reached.

“After the conflict emerged in 1969, various constitutional methods were tried to resolve the dispute, but all were a failure,” he said. “The 1980s saw some behind-the-scenes dialogue, which led to a ceasefire in 1984.”

That lasted only until 1986 because, as a condition to open public negotiations, the Provisional IRA had to decommission its weapons. “The IRA instead responded with bombings in England and Northern Ireland,” in effect expanding the conflict, Edwards said.

“Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s would have nothing to do with those who commit violence,” cementing a stalemate, he noted.

By the 1990s, however, the conflict-weary British were seeking an exit strategy and pragmatism became a key component. When Blair came to power in 1997, another cease-fire agreement was reached.

“There’s a sense where ‘ripeness’ is the key to the peace process,” Edwards said. “When violence and atrocities become too much to bear, people will seek a way out. In addition, the parties themselves were deadlocked [over continuing violence], and not necessarily for the same reasons.”

On the macro level, movement toward peace in Northern Ireland was fueled by optimism created by the end of the Cold War. In the 1990s, there were some efforts at peace processes in South Africa and Palestine, for example, which were reflected in Northern Ireland, Edwards said.

“In 1993, when [Yitzhak] Rabin and [Yasser] Arafat shook hands, that encouraged Northern Ireland elites to try to work out their problems,” while encouraging the British government to open negotiations, which eventually led to the 1998 Belfast Agreement, he said.

Unlike the 1984 ceasefire, there was no pre-condition for the IRA to decommission all its paramilitary weapons; instead, the agreement set a two-year target for decommissioning the weapons.

“But Sept. 11 can be seen as a watershed,” Edwards maintained. “Post-9/11, both [George W.] Bush and Blair have spoken of old and new terrorism.”

When asked in 2005 whether negotiation with jihadists was possible in light of the success of negotiations involving Northern Ireland, Blair flatly said no. “You can’t compare political demands of a republican to today’s terrorism,” Blair said. “These demands [of Islamist terrorists] are demands that are just more than any serious person could even negotiate on, and that’s just the end of it.”

There also is the argument that al-Qaeda, as an example, is more of a global threat with its tentacles reaching across national borders, Edwards said, meaning that negotiations might need to involve multiple governments.

“States do talk to terrorists, despite the rhetoric,” Edwards said. “The important lessons of Northern Ireland are that, for successful negotiations, terrorists must end violence before dialogue can begin; that the peace process might involve a reconfiguration of the national political system and that the influence of third parties, such as the United States or the United Nations, can help the peace process. Talks are risky for the government, but exploratory dialogue can at least establish what the grievances are, even if you don’t think they’re legitimate.”

—Peter Hart


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