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NON FICTION ESSAY

Write an essay of about 900-1200 words on the articleHow to talk to terrorists. Your essay must

comment on the structure of the article as well as the argumentation used and how the author

reaches his conclusion. For reference you might want to consult On Purposepages 21-26 and 45-

46. If you are interested in reading the whole article, I have put it in lectio

written work.

How to talk to terrorists

A Taliban commander in Salar district between his two lieutenants.

Jonathan Powell

Tuesday 7 October 2014 05.59 BST

In 1919, the British government had its first major encounter with terrorism, when the

Irish Republican Army was established to drive the British out of Ireland. The government

responded to theIRAs acts of terror which included the assassination of civilians as well

as soldiers with indiscriminate reprisals; these were met in turn by further escalation

from the IRA. The prime minister, David Lloyd George, declared that the British

government would never talk to the murder gang, as he described the IRA. But by 1920,

it became clear to both sides that a military victory was impossible. Lloyd George secretly

began to initiate contact with Michael Collins and other IRA leaders, using a relatively

junior former customs official, Alfred Cope who managed to open up a channel to the
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rebels and negotiate a ceasefire. This led to full-blown talks in Downing Street in 1921, and

eventually to an agreement, albeit a flawed one that later unravelled.

Seventy-six years later, in December 1997, Tony Blair and I sat down in the same cabinetroom in Downing Street with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness; the negotiating

teams, from Sinn Fin and the British government, even sat on the same sides of the table

as they had in 1921. On both occasions, the meeting was a big event. There were more TV

cameras outside Downing Street than there had been on election day seven months earlier,

and we were all nervous. Alastair Campbell had ordered the Christmas tree be removed

from in front of the door of Number 10, so that there could be no pictures of terrorists in

front of festive decorations.

When it comes to terrorism, governments seem to suffer from a collective amnesia. All of

our historical experience tells us that there can be no purely military solution to a political

problem, and yet every time we confront a new terrorist group, we begin by insisting we

will never talk to them. As Dick Cheney put it, we dont negotiate with evil; we defeat it.

In fact, history suggests we dont usually defeat them and we nearly always end up talking

to them. Hugh Gaitskell, the former Labour leader, captured it best when he said: All

terrorists, at the invitation of the government, end up with drinks in the Dorchester.

The IRA in Derry, 1972. Photograph: Keystone-France/Keystone-France/100% Keystone


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I am an unlikely peacenik. I grew up in a military family, and I was involved in the

decisions on all of Tony Blairs wars. I do not think that war is always wrong: sometimes it

is necessary to stop a dictator, prevent massive human-rights abuses, or expel an invader.

But I have also seen that in the modern world, civil wars are the greatest threat tohumanitarian security. If you want to fight starvation, the spread of disease, and mass rape

or to help suffering children, whether child soldiers or the victims of war then the most

important thing you can do is to help end armed conflicts, which is why I have decided to

dedicate the rest of my life to that goal.

* * *

A Hezbi-i-Islami insurgent east of Kabul. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

When every other option has been eliminated, and governments are prepared to

contemplate talking to terrorists, they face a series of bad arguments against doing so.

First, that talking will give the terrorists legitimacy. It is true that armed groups crave

legitimacy, and will go to great lengths to secure it. But it is equally true that such

legitimacy is usually temporary, and disappears if they end the talks and return to violence.

The Farc in Colombia attained some respectability in the Caguan negotiations in 1998-

2002 but lost it as soon as they went back to war, being dismissed as narco-terrorists who

had rejected a reasonable offer from the government.


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Second, it is argued that agreeing to a ceasefire so that talks can begin allows insurgents to

rest, regroup, and re-arm. In fact, experience suggests that it is the armed groups that

suffer most from ceasefires, and find it harder to motivate their forces to return to killing if

the ceasefire ends.

Third, critics suggest that talking can undermine moderate politicians by favouring the

extremists. The Blair government was accused of having sidelined the moderate SDLP to

talk to Sinn Fin, but this was another false charge: in fact, we tried at the beginning to

build an agreement from the centre outward, but the SDLP made it clear they would not

move forward without Sinn Fin.

To say that we need to learn the lessons from the past is not simply to suggest that we can

adopt a model from Northern Ireland or anywhere else that can be plugged into any

conflict and used as a template to solve it. Every conflict is different; its causes are different

and its solution will be different. But I have now studied most of the negotiations between

armed groups and governments in the last 30 years including those that have succeeded

in Mozambique, South Africa, El Salvador, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as those

that have failed in Sri Lanka, Colombia and the Middle East and there is clearly a pattern

to what works and what does not.

Now we face the group that calls itself theIslamic State(Isis), the latest terrorists to

confront us. And yet again we have met them with an emotional response based on the

horror deliberately generated by their acts. We agree to bomb them and insist we will

never speak to them because they are quite unlike any terrorist group we have ever met

before.

Of course there are differences. Their violence is more grisly than al-Qaida, and unlike

many previous terrorist groups they, andBoko Haramin Nigeria, are taking and holding

territory. This time, however, we should stop and consider what we have done in similar

circumstances before. We need to work out a longer term strategy for dealing with

whatever threat they pose, rather than opting once again for a kneejerk response to satisfy

opinion polls. That strategy will certainly include security measures if the terrorists feel

they have the prospect of winning, they will just carry on fighting.
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But we will also need to address the grievances of the Sunni community in Iraq and to

separate out the ex-Baathists and former members of Saddams army, who give the

movement its real power, from the jihadis. And while Isis may not want to talk to us at the

moment, we need to start building a channel to them, as we did with the IRA in 1972, so wecan communicate. At some stage, we will need to negotiate with violent Islamic extremism,

whether in this form or another one, if their ideas continue to have political support and

we want to find a lasting solution to conflict in the region. They are unlikely to simply fade

away. We need to bear in mind that such negotiations do not usually succeed at first; they

have to go through many iterations, and an agreement is usually reached only when a

mutually hurting stalemate exists, in which both sides realise that they cannot prevail

militarily.

* * *

Nor should we expect that we are going to defeat terrorism for good even if we succeed in

dealing with al-Qaida and Isis; there will be new groups and terrorism will always be with

us. It is the ugly twin of democracy and has grown up with it. If minorities cannot get their

way by the ballot box they will sometimes resort to extreme violence to attract attention

and find satisfaction for their demands.

Yet we continue to approach terrorism as if it is something that can be solved or cured.Some experts look for a solution in technology. Drones, jungle-penetrating radar and

electronic counter-measures can help combat terrorists for a while but the terrorists soon

work out a way round the counter-measures and technology helps them develop more

deadly means of attack. The use of mobile phones and social media can make it easier to

track terrorists but it also makes it easier for them to organise without being detected.

There is not going to be a miracle cure for terrorism and we should stop hoping one will

turn up. The solution lies in the tools we already have in our hands fighting and talking.

Success depends on combining military force with offering a political way out.

Jonathan Powell is CEO of the charity Inter-Mediate which works on armed conflicts; his

new book Talking to Terrorists, How to End Armed Conflicts is published by Bodley Head

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3g How to Talk to Terrorists_extr