Israeli Tank During Operation Protective Edge

NEGOTIATING WITH TERRORISTS: A DYSFUNCTIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM APPROACH

Gabriel Munyaga,

Leiden University, Faculty Campus, The Hague

Center for Terrorism and Counterterrorism

On April 4, 2002, President George W. Bush of the United States of America said, “No nation 
can negotiate with terrorists. For there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death.” If that was not enough he repeated his stance on the no-negotiations policy in 2003, according to the work of Harmonie Toros “We Don’t Negotiate with Terrorists: Legitimacy and Complexity in Terrorist Conflicts” he said that, “You’ve got to be strong, not weak. The only way to deal with these people is to bring them to justice. You can’t talk to them. You can’t negotiate with them.”

The stance has then been repeated by the then UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher during the height of the IRA violence that she would never negotiate with Terrorists as well. So let us see why these leaders were felt compelled to act upon this stance firmly and why I agree with them.

Governments are elected or in other occasions supported by the people, in faith and trust for them to be the guidance of their commonwealth. In being handed this responsibility, it is trusted by the many that their form of governance is capable of safeguarding their wellbeing socially, economically and culturally.

What happens then, when an element, or elements either foreign or domestic threatens the same trust and faith that the many have bestowed upon the governance? And when these elements, willingly or unwillingly sees in the use of violence and intimidation as a means to achieve or gain a political ground or a certain attention to the causes they try to “fight” for?

With the questions posed, it is important to remember that, the goal of any Counterterrorism measure is to eventually and totally end terrorism. We need to test assumptions and measures that can produce this desirable outcome in the war against the use of terror in achieving certain goals, be them nationalistic, religious, separatists, leftist, rightist or any sort of extremism in that matter.

In the work of I. William Zartman and Guy Olivier Faure titled Engaging Extremists: Why 
Engage and Why Not, in the introduction part under Obstacles to Engagement, they argue that “…engagement and negotiation carry with them the recognition of the terrorist organization (and for the terrorists the recognition of the state) Recognition confers a degree of ‘legitimacy’ and status, and an implication that the party speaks for the client population it claims to represent. For the state, engagement gives the terrorist legitimacy that overshadows its illegitimate tactics.”

In a certain contrasted point of view, terrorism of any kind or any acts of terroristic nature, that is, disruptive acts aimed at a people by a third factor in an already established state with a political system and process (the first one and two being government and the population)*, fear mongering, public or private sabotaging, use of violence against a targeted population as a means of coercion, is against the law, hence terrorism is, in this view, a criminal act.

Harmonie Toros continue to quote Martha Crenshaw as saying that, ‘the power of terrorism is through political legitimacy, winning acceptance in the eyes of a significant population and discrediting the government’s legitimacy.

It is through this view of terrorism, i.e. discrediting the government’s legitimacy in the eyes of the population that governments should not give in to the impulses that terrorism tries to impart on them.

“Just as politics is an art of the possible, negotiation is an art of compromise” (Zartman and Faure, Why Engage and Why Not, Page 4). In that view, continue to assert Zartman and Faure that actually “…recognition weakens the state’s position and strengthens that of terrorists”

Negotiation leads to compromise, and compromise leads to weaken a state’s stance or policy on terrorism, hence giving in, in part to the demands of the terrorists as opposed to the state’s legal system, and that’s when the fall out starts.

In an article Negotiating With Terrorists: What’s the Big Deal? Benjamin Radford asserts that “some have expressed outrage at the practice, saying it encourages kidnapping and rewards terrorism”

Moreover apart from that, a great number of terrorism convicts who were released as a result of governments negotiating with terror groups returned to terror activities right after their release.

In an article posted on CNSnews.com by Terrence Jeffery on March, 2015 it states that: As of Jan. 15, according to the DNI's report, 647 detainees had been "transferred" from Guantanamo. Of these, 116 (or 17.9 percent) were confirmed to have reengaged in terrorist or insurgent activities and another 69 (or 10.7 percent) were suspected of having reengaged”

In 2001, during the negotiations of releasing a captured Israel Soldier, Gilad Shalit, 1027 convicts of terror were released. 280 of them were on life sentence for terror activities and in total they were responsible of killing 569 Israel civilians. By October 2012, dozens of them had returned to terrorism, and even some of them were rearrested.

In concluding this there are certain issues to put to consideration. Negotiations with terrorists gives them a certain legitimacy and leverage over their illegitimate tactics. It reduces the states into negotiating with non-politically recognized entities that deploys the use of violence as a tactic.

Lastly, there has to be a willingness on the terrorist side to abandon the use of violence, should negotiations be considered. But in most of the cases provided, this hasn’t been the case. Most of the terrorists returned to their old ways and continued to inflict pain through terror. In testing if negotiations could help counter terrorism, we have seen that it can’t This assumption is true, that negotiating with terrorists encourages more terrorism.