The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  MEDIA AND PUBLIC OPINION

  The essential task of the media is to inform readers and watchers about world events. They often have a special interest in terrorist actions and hostage-taking cases because of their dramatic dimension. The hostage takers strive to take advantage of this fact. Many terrorists are technologically sophisticated and use Internet-based media such as YouTube to reach prospective members and the general public. They often resort to the media as an amplifier of their claims and a megaphone for their propaganda. Thus, the head of the People’s Front of Liberation of Palestine said that for him, it was more important to keep one Jewish prisoner in a highly dramatic fashion such as being hostage than killing one hundred of them in a battle. This is why, for instance, the soldier Shalit, after having been kidnapped, was kept prisoner by the Hamas for over five years before any agreement could be struck.

  At times and without intending it, the media, especially the television, may gradually turn the hostage taker from an ordinary person, an anonymous individual among the crowd, into a hot-headed star in the limelight whose words and moves are echoed all over the world. A quasi-symbiotic relation may thus be established between journalists and terrorists, each providing something essential to the other. TV watchers and newspaper readers may feel emotionally involved in the drama related by the media. Public opinion may thus play a role in the strategy that governments adopt. In the case of the hijacking of the Air France flight to Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976 by Palestinians and German leftists, Israeli opinion was opposed to a military solution until the terrorists raised their demands, putting the possibility of reaching a negotiated agreement in jeopardy.1 Only because of this new situation were the Israeli authorities able to implement their usual policy of firmness and decided to storm the airplane.

  The media have occasionally played a direct role in the hostage-taking situation by intervening among the protagonists. Thus, in New York, in a case in which the negotiation had led to an agreement including the release of the hostages and the surrender of the captor, a journalist almost derailed the operation. He managed to reach the hostage taker by telephone and interviewed him on the reasons for his action. The immediate effect was to reactivate the grievances of the captor, who then put the agreement into question again. In a Manila hostage crisis, twenty-five tourists were kept as hostages on a bus by a former police inspector. Millions watched the siege and rescue attempt on live television and the Internet, including the hijacker, because a TV on the bus provided him with essential information concerning the preparations for the assault (Faure, 2011). Eight of the hostages died and a number of others were injured.

  Especially in hostage and barricaded situations social media are changing the way crisis negotiators must approach events. Well-trained terrorists watch TV news coverage to get strategic information and can also manipulate audiences and police. In the Mumbai attacks by an Islamist terrorist group from Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, in 2008, killing 164 people and wounding over 300 others, media played a counterproductive role. The attacks by a group of ten men lasted for fifty-eight hours in eleven different places. Attackers had taken cocaine and LSD to keep awake for this amount of time. The media covered the events live and thus unwittingly provided strategic information to the terrorists, which had the effect of increasing the number of casualties. It took almost two days for the security forces to realize that the terrorists were receiving television broadcasts before the feeds to the hotels where attackers were detaining hostages were blocked. Using clever use of their mobiles, the terrorists managed to confuse the media and the authorities. At one stage, TV reporters announced, incorrectly, that all the attackers had been killed and all hostages were free. As a result of this information, people started to move around without caution, while in fact two terrorists were still alive and ready to shoot. Internet social networks played an important role in spreading live detailed information about the attacks. A map of the attacks was set up by a journalist using Google maps.

  On the media side, even when fully respecting the principle of the freedom of the press, journalists should take into account two considerations: the accuracy of the information and the appropriateness of releasing it. The accuracy issue goes against the necessary speed for being the first to deliver the information. The appropriateness issue concerns the consequences of delivering this information for the hostages, the authorities, and the captors. As a basic principle, authorities normally in charge of the hostage problem try their utmost to keep the media away from the negotiation. With the development of technology, this is getting more and more challenging. Furthermore, hostages’ families and captors tend to turn to media to gain more weight in the negotiation process. In all cases, the consequence is that the value of the captives is raised, making any agreement costlier, if not more unlikely.

  NEGOTIATION EFFECTIVENESS

  There is no more difficult and complex task than assessing the effectiveness of negotiating with terrorists. Should the authorities get the hostages back at any price? Should they unwillingly reward the terrorists this way and encourage them to continue hostage taking? Does each day, week, month, or year of captivity add negative points on the balance sheet of the negotiators’ performance? Should a successful negotiation lead to the capture, surrender, or death of the terrorists? Should the outcome be assessed from a hostage point of view or only from the legal authorities’ point of view? How to evaluate the level of danger for the hostages that may cause the authorities to give up negotiating and shift to the tactical solution by storming where they are held? Criteria for measurement are not obvious and may be even contradictory (Faure, 2004).

  How should one assess, for instance, the outcome of the negotiation on Shalit between the Israeli government and the Hamas: 1 Israeli exchanged for 1,027 Palestinians? There are two ways to understand such an imbalanced swap: it means that 1 Israeli is worth 1,027 Palestinians, or that the Palestinians got a very high return because of their negotiating skill. Each of these two interpretations would reflect the point of view of one party. If we take the negotiation’s point of view, more elements of the context have to be integrated into the overall analysis to explain the settlement reached. On the Israeli side are the political constraints bearing on a government that has to show its effectiveness in taking care of its own people and the pressure exerted by the Shalit family through advocacy groups and media. On the Hamas side, Shalit could not be kept as a prisoner forever and the Israelis would probably eventually find him, thus ruining the whole project for them. Turning all these factors into numbers and reaching a final figure as precise as 1,027 is more a product of an interaction process than a rationally calculated outcome.

  In spite of the potential for mutual gain, negotiation may fail to quickly free (or even save) the hostages. One of the obstacles to negotiation between targets and terrorists is the perceived inability of terrorists to engage in credible commitments (Walter, 1997; Kydd and Walter, 2002). A key barrier to successful negotiation is that governments usually distrust militants and expect them to break their promises. No enforcement mechanism exists to punish terrorists if they do not abide by their commitments. If terrorists face no costs for breaking agreements, targets have no reason to believe that terrorists will stick to their commitments (Lake and Rothchild, 1998; Leeds, 1999).

  Research on terrorism often assumes that terrorists operate free from any institutional constraints, an assumption that is strongly challenged by facts. If terrorists want to negotiate, they must find some mechanism to convince targets that defection has a painful cost. To build their own credibility, terrorists must keep promises in order to establish a reputation for trustworthiness (Lapan and Sandler, 1988). If governments become convinced that terrorists care about their reputation, they may believe that terrorists will abide by their promises. However, few terrorist groups think that they have to stick to the rules and values promoted by their enemies. Terrorist groups, even if not anchored in any specific territory, have often to rely on foreign s
ympathy to conduct their operations. They also need some base of operations, even for a limited time. Given that the terrorists’ base is located within a host’s territory, for instance, a rogue state, the group is subject to some kind of authority by the host. With sufficient political capacity, hosts may thus influence a group’s behavior and ability to operate (O’Brien, 1996). Countries hosting terrorist groups have been active supporters of a wide range of terrorist actions, most notably in bombings and hostage taking. States such as Iran and Syria strongly influence terrorists’ ability to operate (Ranstorp and Xhudo, 1994). Sponsors influence their groups by controlling weapons supplies, funding, and political support. Taking advantage of this situation, the host can constrain terrorists in their behavior to a varying extent.

  Talks and trade-offs between governments and terrorists are often viewed as parentheses in an ongoing warfare. In that case, solving the problem goes through submitting to or destroying the other, and the negotiation is only a means serving this ultimate objective. However, the tactical option has not always been a panacea, and some of negotiations have met resounding failure. The Israeli hostage disaster in Munich in 1972, the Beslan school case, South Russia, in 2004, and the Moscow theater hostage taking ended in bloodbaths with hundreds of victims among the hostages. Nevertheless, brilliant operations such as the successful hostage rescue in Entebbe by the Israelis, the German assault in Mogadishu, the storming of the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, Peru, and the hijacking of the Air France flight at Algiers airport illustrate that tactical solutions may work. However, in nearly all of the recorded cases, death is on the agenda.

  CONCLUSION

  Among the edgiest negotiations are dealing with terrorists. To expect a sufficient level of effectiveness in that task, several requirements have to be met: accepting the terrorist as a negotiating counterpart, developing a specific concept of negotiation, conceptualizing a new strategic approach, implementing specialized skills, and managing a complex system of accountability.

  Considering the terrorist as a possible negotiating counterpart raises the issue of legitimacy. Rebels usually labeled as terrorists are unlikely counterparts. Associating principles of negotiation activity and terrorist action leads to the management of an oxymoron. For a government, discussions with terrorists are a way to legitimize a dissident movement that denies this government as representative and provides them with a formal status. The policy shift usually starts by discussions at the political level, then switches to violent means, then gets to the negotiation table. This is done because the government sees no other way to end the violence, because the stalemate is so damaging that something has to be done to stop it, or because a third party had enough influence to bring the two sides to the negotiation table.

  Producing a specific concept of negotiation relates to the fact that the basic understanding of a negotiation with terrorist groups is that it dramatically differs from traditional practice in substance and in form. It differs in substance because cooperation is not truly on the agenda. The parties do not feel that they are from the same human fabric. The spirit is often much more that of a cease-fire to be agreed on, with each party having a hidden agenda that does not exclude violence, treachery, and deception. The underlying negotiation paradigm tends to be much more a chicken game than a prisoner’s dilemma. It also differs in form, because this type of negotiation is an extension of war through other means. The ideological and ethical dimensions do not contribute to ease tensions among the proponents.

  A new strategic approach, such as turning the absolute terrorists into contingent terrorists, has to be developed. This is an essential response to the most deadly terrorists’ actions. Such an approach means that something in the mind-set of the counterparts has to be changed, that their perceptions of the problem and their actual role have to be modified. This is a challenging task that is critical to save human lives. The terrorists have to see that they can do better through smart negotiation than by killing people.

  Implementing specialized skills is an important requisite because often the two sides do not meet physically or meet in places where one of them has to face an extremely hostile environment. The culture of the terrorist groups is usually not so much borrowed from a set of negotiation values but rather belong to a task force at war. Tension manipulation, aggressive language, hostile listening, threats, deliberately triggered crisis, and other types of hard bargaining tactics are the most common tools they use for a negotiation which is not even called as such.

  Managing relations with stakeholders that have contradictory objectives such as freeing hostages but deterring terrorists from taking any more hostages is a challenge. Consistency and effectiveness are constantly at risk. Negotiation is not only a human struggle but a struggle of reason. These are the attributes of this singular type of interaction that consists of talking to terrorists to contribute to making this world a little safer.

  Note

  1. Two militants from the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two from the German Revolutionäre Zellen, after having embarked in Athens, first hijacked the plane to Benghazi, let go all non-Israeli and non-Jewish passengers, and then diverted it to Entebbe, Uganda. At Entebbe, the four hijackers were joined by three additional terrorists and supported by the pro-Palestinian forces of Uganda’s President, Idi Amin. The Israeli government sent two airplanes of paratroopers, who managed to kill all the captors and release all the hostages.

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