Talking To Terrorists

Across the world governments proclaim that they will never ‘negotiate with evil’. And yet they always have and always will. From jungle clearings to stately homes and anonymous airport hotels, Talking to Terrorists puts us in the room with the terrorists, secret agents and go-betweens who seek to change the course of history. Jonathan Powell has spent nearly two decades mediating between governments and terrorist organisations. Drawing on conflicts from Colombia and Sri Lanka to Palestine and South Africa, this optimistic, wide-ranging, authoritative book is about how and why we should talk to terrorists. ‘Essential reading’ Independent ‘Fascinating’ Sunday Times Now includes a new Afterword - Talking to ISIL *Perfect for fans of The Looming Tower*

From jungle clearings to stately homes and anonymous airport hotels, Talking to Terrorists puts us in the room with those who seek to change the course of history. Here are the terrorists, secret agents and go-betweens who make up the invisible world of negotiations between terrorists and governments. Across the world governments proclaim that they will never âe~negotiate with evilâe(tm). And yet they always have done and always will. Why then do we ignore the lessons of this history of clandestine communication, often with devastating consequences? Jonathan Powell has spent nearly two decades mediating between governments and terrorist organisations. Here he argues that no conflict âe" however bloody, ancient or difficult âe" is insoluble. With attention to the lessons of the past, patience and above all political leadership, they can be solved, even where previous attempts have failed. Talking to terrorists will always be practically difficult and morally hazardous. But it is the right thing to do. Drawing on conflicts from Colombia and Sri Lanka to Palestine and South Africa, this optimistic, wide-ranging, authoritative book is about why we should and how best to go about it.

The peace agreement in Northern Ireland has been held up as a beacon for conflict resolution around the world. The lessons of Ulster have been applied by prime ministers, presidents, diplomats and intelligence agents to many areas of violent conflict, from Spain to Sri Lanka, from Afghanistan to Iraq and, frequently, the Israel-Palestine crisis. From Belfast to Basra, the notion that it is necessary to engage in dialogue with one's enemies has been fetishised across the political spectrum. Talking to terrorists is a necessary pre-requisite to peace, it is argued, and governments should avoid rigid pre-conditions in their attempt to bring in the extremes. But does this understanding really reflect what happened in Northern Ireland? Moreover, does it apply to other areas where democratic governments face threats from terrorist organisations, such as in the Basque region of northern Spain? In challenging this notion, the authors offer an analytical history of the transition from war to peace in Northern Ireland, and compare the violent conflict in the Basque country over the same period, demonstrating how events there have developed very differently than the advocates of 'the Northern Ireland model' might presume. The authors recognise that governments have often talked to terrorists and will continue to do so in the future. But they argue that what really matters is not the act of talking to terrorists itself but a range of other variables including the role of state actors, intelligence agencies, hard power and the wider democratic process. Above all, there is a crucial difference between talking to terrorists who believe that their strategy is succeeding and those who have been made to realise that their aims are unattainable by violence.

It has long been an article of faith that the United States does not ''talk to terrorists that to engage in dialogue with groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood would be tacitly to acknowledge their status as legitimate political actors. Not so, argues Middle East expert Mark Perry. In the absence of dialogue, we have lumped these groups together with Al Qaeda as part of a monolithic enemy defined by a visceral hatred of American values. In reality, while they hold deep grievances about specific US policies, they are ultimately far more defined by their opposition to the deliberately anti-political Salafist ideology of Al Qaeda. Drawing on extensive interviews with Washington insiders, Perry describes fruitful covert meetings between members of the US armed forces and leaders of the Iraqi insurgency to demonstrate that talking to terrorists may be best way to end terrorism controversial wisdom we ignore at our peril.

This is an account of traveling through the West Bank and Gaza, into the prisons of Iraq, down the alleyways of the Casablanca slums, to Chechnya, into the radicalized neighborhoods of Belgium, the UK, France and the Netherlands, of sitting with the hostages of Beslan and Nord Ost, and of talking to terrorists. Dr. Speckhard gives us the inside story of what puts vulnerable individuals on the terrorist trajectory and what might take them back off of it. With more than four hundred interviews with terrorists and their friends, family members and hostages, Dr. Speckhard is one of the few experts to have such a breadth of experience. She visited, and even stayed overnight, in the intimate spaces of terrorists' homes, interviewed them in their stark prison cells, or met them in the streets of their cities and villages. Dr. Speckhard gives us a rare glimpse of terrorists within their own contexts. From the mouths of terrorists, their family members, comrades-and even their hostages, we learn of the manipulation of human weakness that can lead to violent acts. Through careful research of culture and religion and a genuine desire to understand the factors that motivate individuals to embrace terrorism, Dr. Speckhard deftly defines the lethal cocktail that leads to the creation of a terrorist. An internationally recognized expert on the psychological aspects of terrorism and an expert in the area of posttraumatic stress disorder, Dr. Speckhard's research also produces a knowledge of how to disengage, deradicalize, rehabilitate, and reverse the trajectory of a terrorist. Dr. Speckhard's studies spanning over a decade provide us with a deeper understanding of one of the most dangerous and violent phenomena of our times.

"I looked around the room and I thought, I'm the only person in this room that hasn't killed anyone"Talking to Terrorists is a play commissioned by the Royal Court and Out of Joint. The writer, director Max Stafford-Clark, and actors interviewed people from around the world who have been involved in terrorism. They wanted to know what makes ordinary people do extreme things.As well as those who crossed the line, they met peacemakers, warriors, journalists, hostages and psychologists. Their stories take us from Uganda, Israel, Turkey, Iraq and Ireland - to the heart of the British establishment.Talking to Terrorists was produced Out of Joint Theatre Company at the Royal Court Theatre and on a UK tour in 2005.

This book examines the doctrine of giving no concessions to terrorists, and uses empirical research to establish whether there is any link between negotiating with such groups and the spread of violence. The logic of the no-concessions doctrine is based on the argument that other terrorist groups multiply when they realize that terrorism succeeds in achieving political goals. Proponents of the no-concessions doctrine have argued that there is a pattern in terrorist contagion which results from giving in to their demands. Statistical evidence for terrorist contagion is not convincing enough, however, as depicting an increase in terrorist incidences as a consequence of concessions could merely imply a flawed causality. Without an explanation for such correlations we are left wondering whether other reasons could be decisive in the increase in terrorist actions. Based on field research in four countries and interviews with current and former members of several different terrorist groups, this book establishes a qualitative relationship between concessions to terrorists on the one hand and (non-)contagion of other terrorist groups on the other. The deterrence effect, intended by the imperative never to concede, is seriously challenged. In fact, it can be precisely through concessions that groups mentalities and actions are called into question. The book will be of great interest to students of terrorism and political violence, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR/politics. Carolin Goerzig is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris and has a PhD in Political Science from Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich.

Using rare field research, this book investigates whether and how talking may transform terrorist violence. Given the failings of today’s dominant counterterrorism strategy, is talking a viable policy option to transform conflicts marked by terrorist violence? This book examines the reasons why "negotiating with terrorists" is so often shunned by decision-makers and scholars as a policy response, concluding that such objections are primarily based on a realist and statist understanding of terrorism that has dominated the field so far. Based on interviews with top rebel and military commanders in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao and interviewing key actors in Northern Ireland, Terrorism, Talking and Transformation investigates how talking may contribute to the transformation of conflicts marked by terrorist violence. The result of this analysis is a theoretically grounded, empirically recognizable and emancipation oriented framework that can be used to investigate the potential of talking in transforming not only terrorist (and counterterrorist) violence, but also the underlying structural violence that often surrounds it. This book will be of much interest to students in the fields of terrorism studies, security studies, Southeast Asian studies, conflict resolution/transformation and IR in general, and of use to practitioners in the field.