The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  The dawn of the twenty-first century has given increasing importance to terrorism as a potential way to achieve important goals with little means. Dealing with terrorist groups includes fighting them, preventing their development, and, whenever useful and possible, negotiating with them. Negotiators who are confronted with terrorists include members of the police and national defense agencies, agents working for specialized services, consultants, and intermediaries operating as proxies or mediators. This is an unusual type of diplomacy, for these people represent a country without representing it. Officially, as a matter of principle, states do not commit to negotiating with terrorists. Furthermore, terrorists, even hostage takers, are among the most unlikely negotiators. When they take hostages, it is not to discuss what could be agreed on to have the hostages released but simply to impose their demands.

  Nothing in the diplomatic tradition of governments has prepared states to deal with such people, but necessity has increasingly led to negotiating with these very special counterparts. The negotiation process operates as a two-circle system. The negotiators themselves belong to the first circle of actors—those who are in direct verbal contact with the terrorists. Thus, they stand in stark contrast to the official authorities, the second circle, who remain behind the scenes but are the decision makers. This form of track 2 diplomacy, which is an informal channel for negotiating without any official commitment, is an asymmetrical relationship: on the one hand, there is a state (or her informal representatives) and on the other hand a group that is often a nebulous and evasive organization with no obvious territorial basis and goals that are not always clear. The management of such a relationship is challenging, for the negotiation is officially a nonnegotiation and the counterparts are the most unwilling bargainers.

  Governments or official authorities aim to achieve two conflicting goals: saving hostages and at the same time deterring their counterparts from taking any more hostages. This is one of the most difficult dilemmas to manage when facing terrorists. Saving the life of the hostages is a short-term objective that has a highly emotional dimension, while deterrence is a long-term objective that is not spectacular but has a high global return.

  Two basic types of situations can be distinguished: those where discussions can take place immediately and those where the potential for negotiation has to be created. Examples of the first situation can be found in terrorists who have taken hostages or pirates who attack a ship. They seek to exchange the captured persons or goods for members of their organization who are in prison, or for money, or for logistical assistance. When terrorists do not ask for anything and conceive their actions as being strictly punitive, negotiable issues have to be created. For instance, this can be done in a siege or hijack situation by trying to convince terrorists who are ready to die that they can serve their cause much more effectively by staying alive and that they can save the reputation of their organization by not killing their hostages. These are the major tasks that actors in this special form of diplomacy strive to carry out.

  THE TERRORISTS

  The concept of terrorism, which is politically and emotionally charged, is not easy to characterize. There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism but simply a working definition widely used by social scientists:

  Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby—in contrast to assassination—the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat and violence-based communication processes between the terrorist organisation, imperilled victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience[s]), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought. (Schmid and Jongman, 1988)

  Using violence against a population or a group is essentially done through intimidation or calculated coercion. A weapon of the weak against the strong, terrorism resorts to a number of tactical means: assassination, car bombing, suicide bombing, rocket attacks, sniping, hijacking, kidnapping, hostage taking, or issuing threats. Terrorism is understood as an attempt to provoke fear and intimidation. It is the result of an extremely imbalanced situation in terms of forces compensated by extraordinary means. The practice of terrorism falls into the category of asymmetrical warfare, for the belligerents resort to resources and methods differing in essence from the means of action usually accepted in a classical conflict. Terrorists try to exploit the weaknesses of their designated enemies by replacing missing resources by unconventional means and psychological commitment (Mack, 1975). Their actions could be understood as the equivalent of war crimes in peacetime (Schmid, 1992).

  Engaging in terrorist actions is often a by-product of frustration. There is no war on terrorism or possible negotiations with terrorism, because it is simply a method, a set of strategies and tactics. Wars and negotiations can be carried out only with or against terrorists, which are objective counterparts. Terrorists seek to spread fear and therefore aim to attract wide publicity and cause public shock. The goal may also be to provoke disproportionate reactions from governments, thus generating an escalation process (Zartman and Faure, 2005). Terrorism as asymmetrical warfare does not abide by laws and international rules, whereas governments are bound by them. As Laqueur (1999) has said, “In the terrorist conception of warfare there is no room for the Red Cross.”

  TERRORIST PROFILES: THE POLITICAL, THE RELIGIOUS, THE CRIMINAL

  For the past thirty years, over 160 organizations dealing with political issues have been identified as terrorist. Currently, the US government has officially designated 53 of them as terrorist organizations. This list includes neither terrorist states nor “lone wolf terrorists.”

  Terrorists fall into three clusters related to their goals and motivations, which can be political, religious, or economic. In the first group, political organizations, are the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), the Shining Path in Peru, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Fraction (a leftist group in Germany), the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in Turkey, separatist groups in the Northern Caucasus, the ETA in Spain, Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades (a Palestinian nationalist movement), the former Nepalese Maoists (Unified Communist Party of Nepal), and the former IRA in Northern Ireland. Rogue states are sometimes included in this category because they abide only by their own rules and engage in illegal or criminal activities, as North Korea or Iran do with nuclear dissemination. Through nuclear businesses or secret sales of missiles, for example, they finance themselves and increase their leverage in the international arena.

  In the category of religious groups are Al Qaeda; Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement); the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines; the former Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria, now Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb; al-Shabaab, a radical militant group in Somalia; Lashkar-e-Taiba, “Army of the Pure,” a Pakistani group that has attacked civilian targets in India; Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese religious sect; Lord’s Resistance Army, a Christian/pagan group that operates in northern Uganda; and Hezbollah (“Party of God”), a Shiite military organization in Lebanon.

  If the issue at stake is a territory or the demand for autonomy, as is often the case with separatist factions, a compromise through negotiations might be achieved, but dialogue is extremely difficult to establish with religious fundamentalists such as Islamist radical movements. Their purpose is to spread or enforce their system of beliefs in specific territories. Their demands are often far beyond what can reasonably be accepted, such as the restoration of the caliphate, a pure Islamic state made of the entire community of the believers, from Morocco to Pakistan or the r
emoval of all Western forces from Muslim territories (with the suppression of the state of Israel) and the restitution of formerly Muslim lands (including parts of Spain). These organizations can be classified as absolute terrorists if we use the definition given by Zartman (2006) and developed by Faure and Zartman (2010). Absolute terrorists are those whose action is “non-instrumentalist, a self-contained act that is completed when it has occurred and is not a means to obtain some other goal” (Zartman, 2006, p. 2). In these cases, even if the point is not just to punish the other party, as with the September 11 attacks in the United States, totally unrealistic claims make any negotiation most improbable.

  The third type of terrorists corresponds to the economic category and operates as organized crime, a nongovernmental actor that will play a key role in the new diplomatic practice (Hocking, Melissen, Riordan, and Sharp, 2012). Prominent examples are the Sicilian Cosa Nostra; the Calabrese ’Ndrangheta; the Neapolitan Camorra; the Albanian mafia; Chinese triads such as the 14K triad from Hong Kong; Mexican and Colombian drug cartels such as the Tijuana Cartel or the Sinaloan cartel from Mexico; Yakuza gangs in Japan such as the Yamaguchi-Gumi syndicate; and, more recently, the Russian Solntsevskaya Mafia, the Serbian mafia, and the Ukrainian Bratva.

  These nonstate actors aim to control economic activities; business channels; and underground activities such as drug trafficking, prostitution, gambling, smuggling of weapons, stolen art, Internet fraud, contract killing, human trafficking, money laundering, voter buying, bid rigging, loansharking, and racketeering for so-called protection. For instance, the ’Ndrangheta, one of the fastest-growing such groups, controls an estimated 80 percent of the cocaine imported to Europe. It has penetrated the European Parliament through its Italian representatives (“Mafias on the Move,” 2012). The Russian mafia, Solntsevskaya Bratv (the Brotherhood), trades in everything from stolen art to nuclear technology. The six hundred major Russian organized crime groups may have 100,000 to 500,000 members spread over fifty countries.

  All of these organizations resort to threats and assassinations to establish and maintain their control over an activity or a portion of territory. Their estimated earnings account for almost 10 percent of world GDP—over $6 trillion (World Economic Forum, 2010). They use psychological warfare based on fear instilled to such an extent that ordinary people concede to their demands rather than follow the law. Sometimes religious or political groups expand their activities to organized crime in order to make money through kidnapping, drug dealing, or extorting a “revolutionary tax”, an involuntary financial contribution obtained through racket. The FARC of Colombia and Chechen rebel groups belong to this last category. For instance, in 2000, the FARC held at least thirty-five hundred hostages as captives as an exchange currency.

  Although negotiating with most of these groups has not always led to many tangible results, it is realistic to consider political and criminal groups as possible counterparts because the values they promote can find a concrete expression in specific circumstances that make the problem negotiable. It has been the case with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) concerning the issue of power sharing in Northern Ireland and Maoists in Nepal. They fall into the category of contingent terrorists, and possible trade-offs with them can be considered (Zartman, 2006; Faure and Zartman, 2010). In such cases, the whole point of negotiating is the possibility that as a result, they will shift from absolute terrorist to contingent terrorist. This means that the group has to modify its perception of the problem and its related objectives and demands. For their part, the authorities have to concede something they did not offer before in order to make the negotiation option attractive enough.

  TERRORISTS IN ACTION

  Terrorism draws considerable advantages from globalization because terrorist groups can be set up on transnational bases. Borders are no longer obstacles, and the extension and sophistication of technology has greatly contributed to the development of multifunctional organizations operating at the financial, social, and strategic levels. They can be informal and decentralized in a context where communication is fast, anonymous, and effective. It is no longer necessary to have a territorial base even if situated, for instance, in a country with a collapsed state. There are a number of anarchical megapoles such as Karachi that can be used as unassailable sanctuaries. The field of action of terrorism is a civilian context, where spotting a group is difficult and their actions the most deadly. In addition, Western laws emphasizing individual freedom often drastically limit defense capacities.

  The most spectacular terrorist attacks have been carried out in the United States and Europe, but the West is not the prime target of jihad terrorism. The most fatalities occur in the Middle East. Muslims are the principal victims of terrorism perpetrated in the name of Islam. The Iraq war has drastically boosted terrorism instead of lessening it. Considering the high level of domestic attacks and fatalities in Iraq, one may conclude that September 11, and the “war on terror” that has followed, have clearly contributed to a clash within one civilization, turning this country into an epicenter of terrorist activities. Nevertheless, Europe has been another battlefield. The Madrid attacks and the London bombings tragically illustrate this fact. Thus, some countries have gradually become an operating base for terrorist support groups. This evolution has been facilitated by the increase in Muslim communities in the West, growing tensions with native populations, and the relative freedom with which radicals can organize themselves in mosques and charitable and cultural organizations (Alonso, 2010; Clutterbuck, 2010). The ideological work was done by militants who came to these countries as religious dignitaries.

  Another phenomenon in the Western world has also provided new human resources for terrorist groups: the radicalization of the second generation of immigrants. In Europe alone in the year 2010, 179 members of terrorist organizations planning an attack were arrested preventively. Among the major targets of Al Qaeda were, and possibly still are, Heathrow Airport, the Panama Canal, the port of Dubai, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the FBI building in Washington, DC, and the White House.

  Russia is another target for terrorists, especially with female suicide attackers who are Chechen militants involved in a separatist war in the Caucasus and exporting their bombing campaign to Moscow. In less than a decade, sixteen strikes of women bombers have been recorded in crowded places—such as subway stations, airplanes, cafés, and music festivals—killing hundreds of people. These women, nicknamed “black widows” because they wear billowy black robes and are strapped with explosives, are taking revenge for their husbands killed in Chechnya.

  Over two decades, considerable changes have occurred in terrorism. One of the most important is the organizational shift from a pyramidal system to a rhizome model. The pyramidal system is a stage that prevailed until the end of the cold war. Terrorist groups and guerrilla movements were following Leninist principles of organization with a strict centralized command system. They were most often financed, controlled, trained, and monitored by states that had a strategy whose rationale was, if not shared, at least well understood. The rhizome type of organization stage corresponds to the birth of entities proliferating in a quasi-biological way like bamboo groves or strawberry plants. These entities are loosely structured, autonomous, and ideology driven. They may lead to individual jihad, a form of do-it-yourself terrorism. The extensive Al Qaeda networks resort to modern means of propaganda using the Internet and unexpected places such as jails for recruiting members. The number of their websites is growing. They publish an online magazine for recruiting young Muslims. They are uncontrollable by states, difficult to identify, and even more difficult to infiltrate. As shown by the killing of Osama bin Laden, his activities were mostly focused on reinterpreting Islamic doctrine in a modern context. Thus, the head of Al Qaeda, literally “the base,” had turned his place into nothing more than a spiritual base. Now he has become immortal.

  STRATEGIC OPTIONS FOR ENGAGING TERRORISTS

  Negot
iations with terrorists use methods that are fundamentally alien to the classic practice of diplomacy because of the nature of the terrorists, the issues at stake, the context, and the basic paradigm governing the situation. The terrorist is not perceived as an equal in terms of status or legitimacy. An element of psychological asymmetry characterizes the relation, and communication is scarce. Terrorists are viewed as imposing themselves, forcing their way, resorting to unethical means, and thus not respecting the other. What is at stake is most often highly dramatic because one is dealing with human lives (Faure, 2002). Thus, the smallest mistakes may have terrible consequences for the hostages, along with highly traumatizing effects on the negotiators. The scarcity of solutions when the hostages are detained in a place or a country that is a partner in crime with the terrorists adds to the difficulty. The situation is characterized by a number of uncertainties, in particular the credibility of the threat, which is one of the basic techniques terrorists use. Uncertainty may also characterize the health status of the hostages: Are they alive, wounded, sick, underfed, beaten, tortured?

  Each terrorist group has its own methods. For instance, Al Qaeda members originally did not take hostages, for their purpose was to punish “Judeo-Crusaders” or “Nazarene unfaithfuls” (the Christians) and to trigger an escalation process in reciprocal violence between the West and the Muslim world. Later, they started (especially with AQIM, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) taking hostages and thus turned to extortion. Bin Laden referred to the hostages as “enemy prisoners.” Still, they would take only male prisoners to be traded.