Guy Olivier Faure
Terrorism is not a new phenomenon. The word comes from the French Revolution with the idea of a group imposing a new power through terror, but the practice is much older. It was already a method used in the biblical times by the Sicarii (“dagger men”) Zealots, a Jewish group spreading terror among “collaborators” of the occupying Romans. In the mid-nineteenth century, terrorism became a common tool in Russia for anarchist groups in their struggle against the czar. French anarchists, then Irish Republicans, then Jewish groups in the Middle East took their turn in inducing fear to enforce their views. More recently, Palestinians, and jihadists have illustrated this type of action to meet their political or religious purposes.
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 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.”
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 removal 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.
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.
Negotiations 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.
Negotiators have five strategic options in the face of terrorist actions such as hostage taking: no negotiation, manipulation of the terrorist group, secret negotiation, normal negotiation, and negotiation in order to prepare for an assault. The no negotiation doctrine aims to deter terrorists from taking more hostages. It makes sense in a long-term strategy in terms of risk management. It is, for instance, the official Israeli policy with regard to Palestinians. This is also British policy: the United Kingdom strictly bans any form of substantive concession such as a ransom or the release of prisoners. This option has the most painful consequences concerning the hostages, who may feel that they are being sacrificed to long-term national interests.
Manipulation of the terrorist group is a complex strategy that can yield high benefits but requires great skills, time, and an ability to deal with a high level of risk. The principle behind it is to use sophisticated ploys in order to get the hostages free. It is a smart game of deception that has been successfully used against the FARC of Colombia, for example. Detainees of this Marxist-Leninist movement were kept in several mountain areas and jungles controlled by the FARC, and communication between the camps was difficult. The Colombian military intelligence managed to infiltrate some of these local hideouts and spent months gaining the terrorists’ trust. At some point, a government mole was able to convince the FARC’s chiefs in charge of the hostages to accept a so-called request from FARC headquarters to transfer the hostages for safety. In fact, they were brought to a meeting place where they were taken care of by a very small number of Colombian government commandos dressed as guerrillas acting as a kind of medical help and put in a helicopter similar to those used by the Red Cross. All fifteen captives had been handcuffed before being placed aboard the helicopter, along with two of their FARC guards, who were disarmed and subdued after take-off. Then the hostages were taken to freedom when a government intelligence agent told them. “We are with the army; you are free.” The whole operation was performed without a single shot, and no one was wounded.
The secret negotiation strategy is more commonly used. No one mentions anything about what is really going on, not even that there are meetings or discussions. One of the major advantages of this option is that negotiators are removed from the influence of public opinion and media. It provides more flexibility for the authorities, who do not have to report to any outside audience and avoid the issue of looking weak if they make concessions. This was the case after the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 by Islamic students supported by the Iranian government. Fifty-two US diplomats and employees of the embassy were kept as hostages during 444 days of terrible mistreatment under the slogan, “America can’t do a thing.” After a rescue mission that turned into a disaster, the US government, humiliated and helpless, had no other choice than to negotiate discretely to free the Americans.
The normal negotiation option is used when there is no way of hiding the hostage taking from the public. The authorities have to stand the pressure of the media, public opinion, and actions carried out by the families of the hostages. This is what happened with the French journalists taken as hostages in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. At that time, it was common practice in Iraq, almost a national sport, and there was even a base rate for the ransom to be paid for a Western hostage.
Some of these negotiations save lives as in the case with a Lufthansa flight in Mogadishu (1977). When the plane was still in Dubai, the four Arab terrorists started checking passengers’ papers to find out who was a Jew. They did not know that religion is not mentioned on German passports. Then they tried to find other clues to spot their first victims. One of the passengers had a Mont Blanc fountain pen with, at the tip, the white stylized six-pointed star with rounded edges, representative of the Mont Blanc snowcap from above. The hostage takers understood it as a Jewish symbol and decided to execute the owner of the fountain pen. After a long discussion, the pilot managed to convince them to delay the execution. Then the copilot was spotted wearing a Junghans wrist watch with an eight-pointed star. Suspecting that he was wearing a Jewish product, the terrorists’ leader decided to kill him. After another long and dramatic negotiation, the terrorist agreed to destroy only the watch and did it on the spot with an axe.
Negotiation in order to prepare for an assault is another way of resorting to the discussion process in order to collect information about the terrorists, such as the number of terrorists and details of their equipment and state of mind. It is also a means of exhausting them or altering their concentration levels before launching an attack. This is usually done when the environment is well controlled by the authorities. The storming of the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, Peru, in 1996–1997 is one of many cases belonging to this category.
These options refer to distinct negotiation paradigms. The no negotiation policy can be framed as an anticipated “chicken game”: there is no option for cooperation. The priority is not to free the hostages but to deter terrorists from repeating this type of action. Considering the current situation, the setting is one with a win-lose outcome at best and a lose-lose outcome at worst. The manipulation of the terrorist group belongs to the no negotiation rationale and carries the idea that what is played is a win-lose game with the highest possible gains: total victory at no cost while saving the hostages’ lives. It can be a victory at several levels: human, political, strategic, and psychological. The negotiation in order to prepare for an assault can lead the negotiation process astray. It turns it into a simple means of achieving a different objective, one that does not involve any form of agreement. There is no real process of adjustment, with the negotiation simply setting the stage for the surrender, or potentially the death, of the terrorists and the hostages. The secret negotiation and normal negotiation options relate to the prisoner’s dilemma paradigm: they leave room for competition but also some kind of cooperation in which the two parties can achieve at least part of their goals.
Fighting or negotiating with a terrorist group implies first understanding it, which means grasping its vision of the world; its representation of the others; and its goals, motivations, and values. It is information gathering, an essential condition for discussions. Some groups are well known, publish about themselves, have websites, have access to media, have been the object of research and reports on them. Some are not well documented, and negotiators may have to resort to infiltration to collect enough information to be effective with them or about them. Introducing moles in a secret organization is not a practice without risk, and the human cost may be dramatic. Debriefing former members of the terrorist group is another way to collect strategic data but runs the risk of getting misleading information. Furthermore, democracies put a number of limitations on the techniques that can be used during interrogations.
As soon as different cultures face each other, the reality lies very much in the eyes of the beholder. For instance, Western analysts believe that Egypt’s poverty stems from overpopulation, mismanagement of resources, and excessive defense expenditures, whereas its fundamentalist groups explain it by the spiritual failures of the population, its religious laxness, its secularist trends, and widespread corruption. In their view, the solution is a return to the simplicity, the hard work, and the self-reliance of true Muslim living.
Terrorist organizations have been thoroughly studied much beyond their structure and methods of action (Creenshaw, 2010; Sageman, 2008; Post, 2007; Hoffman, 2006; Horgan, 2005; Laqueur, 2004). For instance, we know that Al Qaeda members believe that the world is degenerate and unjust and that salvation lies in adopting Sharia, Islamic law. It sees the main enemies of Muslims as Jews, “heretics,” and the United States. It considers these forces as the main causes of Muslim suffering, and Shia Muslims are viewed as apostates. Members believe that the “Zionist entity,” meaning the state of Israel, should be eliminated, the United States should be expelled from the Middle East, and new caliphate established on the ruins of this degenerated world, all of which can only be achieved through violent jihad. To serve this purpose, suicide bombers are ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for God. It is a path to sanctity, and the martyrdom of one of its members brings pride and respect to the family. The usual distinction between civilians and military people is abandoned. Both regard themselves as “soldiers of Allah” mobilized to fight “evil” and overthrow the “impure order.”
On personal and social behavior, radical Islamists consider “fornication,” homosexuality, gambling, intoxicants, and the practice of usury as absolute evils. Music and theater are not acceptable, and women should be fully covered, including their face. They want to impose their understanding of Islam through delegitimating other creeds. The overall strategy conceived by bin Laden was to lure the United States into a war of attrition against the Muslim world, where tribal law requires revenge, triggering an escalation process in the global jihad with the purpose of “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy” (Al-Jazeera, 2004). Tactically, Al Qaeda finds some leverage by embedding itself in local insurgencies, especially in countries with a failing state, and spreading its ideology in a highly disturbed social fabric. Thus, at first sight, for Al Qaeda, there is no room for negotiation with the “infidels.”
Having lost the American Revolution, a British general tried first to surrender to a French commander, who politely directed him to George Washington. At stake was an issue of legitimacy. Similarly, negotiating with terrorists implies a kind of de facto recognition of their organization. Prior to entering the negotiation, terrorists usually raise this issue. Officially no government recognizes a terrorist group, an extortionist, or a hostage taker as a legitimate equal. Democracies must never give in to crime, and terrorists must never be rewarded for using it. In addition, there is a widely acknowledged principle of stipulating that one does not negotiate under threat even though threat is the most basic and most effective weapon that terrorists use. The principles are clear, but because the point is to save lives, negotiators have to be realistic.
The moral duty of intervening was formalized in a 1987 UN resolution that condemns hostage taking, whatever the motivations, but requires governments to take all necessary measures to put an immediate end to the confinement. Most often governments choose to intervene, either directly or with the help of a third party. This is done through what is conventionally called track 2 diplomacy. The no negotiation principle is more of a hard-line rhetoric than a reality, especially if the place where the hostages are kept is unknown or is in a country friendly to terrorists. History shows that democracies are more willing to negotiate and compromise with terrorism than they admit (Quinney and Coyne, 2011; Zartman and Faure, 2011). For instance, The British government sustained a back channel to the Irish Republican Army even after the IRA launched a spectacular mortar attack on 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting in 1991. In the case of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted by Hamas in 2006, the Israeli government abandoned its no negotiation principle and finally decided to open discussion with the Hamas, a terrorist organization that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Should a government negotiate with terrorists? Considering only the effectiveness criterion, that is, the freedom or life of the hostages, some researchers (Fisher, Ury, and Patton, 1991) provide a positive answer on the ground that communication is a way to exert influence. Negotiation is a mechanism for influencing other parties’ decisions, and given adverse or suboptimal circumstances, it may be a measure of last resort for avoiding an undesirable outcome. The point is not whether to negotiate or not to negotiate but to negotiate properly. One should simply make clear that a decision to negotiate does not mean recognition of the legitimacy of the demand or the acceptance of the other side’s behavior. What one does accept when negotiating with terrorists is the humanitarian cause it serves through trying to save lives (Faure, 2006).
If the basic principle that applies to such a situation is at least not to make any concessions, the only resource left to authorities is persuasion. This is usually insufficient to free the hostages. Then, discrete concessions have to be made at some point. This was the case in Tehran with the storming of the US embassy. Usually the final deal is not made public because often the country involved has to make concessions that if known, would create problems with other countries or with its own public opinion (Faure and Shakun, 1988). Here the iceberg principle applies more than in any other situation: disclosing only a small portion of the information known. If one considers again, for instance, the actions of the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines for over a decade, no government has acknowledged having paid a ransom to obtain the freedom of its own nationals. For its own part, the Filipino government formally opposes payment of ransom for hostages. In all cases, it is unlikely that persuasion alone has been sufficient to free hostages whose only function is to serve as exchange currency.
Faure and Zartman (2010) contend that negotiating with terrorist organizations is not supping with the devil. It is not soul selling or evil and does not imply that the state is abandoning its moral values. The point is to induce moderation and flexibility in the terrorists’ demands, reshaping their ends into attainable reforms, and forcing an end to their violent means of protest while at the same time opening the political process to broader participation. States should engage not because of terrorist violence but to end terrorist violence.
On the side of the authorities, what is traded off with terrorists is human lives. In return, the concessions made to hostage takers fall into the following categories:
As hostage taking spreads around the world, a sort of market price for hostages has been established. According to the place, conditions, number of hostages, and the financial resources of governments, the ransom may vary from $1 million to $10 million. Among the most generous governments stands Japan, then Western countries such as Germany. The world record for ransom was probably set by Li Ka-shing, a renowned Hong Kong real estate tycoon, who paid an estimated amount of HK$1.3 billion for his son who was abducted in 1966.
Two major generic types of situations created by terrorist actions call for negotiation: kidnapping and barricade hostage taking. Kidnapping usually refers to an action done in a context not controlled by the captors unless it is perpetrated in a rogue state, one without control over its territory. The authorities who have to solve the case do not know where the hostages are confined. The terrorists hide within the society by appearing as unnoticeable as possible. Contacts between the authorities and the captors are indirect and uneasy, with little interaction. The FARC of Colombia has illustrated this practice with a record four thousand people kidnapped over the last decade. The Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines also has an impressive record in this domain. Because there were not enough potential targets in their country, this group went to neighboring countries to kidnap people they thought would be good currency for exchange. The former GSPC (Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat) in North Africa took Western tourists as hostages after having carefully selected those from countries that have been particularly generous in paying for the freedom of their nationals.
The second type of situation, barricade hostage taking, corresponds to a situation of siege. Here the fishbowl theory applies: the fish is the perpetrator and the bowl his sphere of protection. Outside the bowl, he is highly vulnerable because he does not control anything in the immediate surroundings. He is under the constant threat of assault. Even electricity, food, and water depend on the goodwill of the forces that surround the terrorists. A number of cases illustrate such a situation in which the final purpose of the negotiation is not to seek an agreement but to prepare for what is usually called the “tactical solution,” a storming of the place. This is what happened with the Maalot School in Israel in 1974 when children were taken hostage by a Palestinian group. In Moscow in 2002, a group of Chechen militants took over a theater and held the entire audience, over 850 people, as hostages. In Lima, Peru, in 1996, the residence of the Japanese ambassador was occupied by a revolutionary group for more than four months. Fourteen rebels from the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement took seventy-two hostages during a traditional celebration. In the three cases, the place of detention was stormed and the terrorists killed. In addition, in the Maalot hostage taking, twenty-one children were killed, and in the Moscow theater case, at least ninety hostages died during the assault.
Hijacking a plane is a mixed situation, with characteristics of both barricade hostage taking and kidnapping. Terrorists try to maximize their chances of success by creating a situation in which they can move the situation of siege to a friendlier context such as a rogue state. If this is carried out successfully, the captors do not risk having their place stormed. Typical hijacking cases were the Lufthansa flight that was forced to land in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1977 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; a TWA flight hijacked from Athens by the Hezbollah and constrained to land at Beirut in 1985; and an Air France flight hijacked in 1986 first to Benghazi, Libya, then to Entebbe, Uganda, by a Palestinian terrorist group and a German leftist organization.
Hostage takers who appropriate the lives of innocent people they do not know and representatives of legitimate organizations whose action is carried out according to the law do not have much in common. This characteristic has an obvious consequence for the negotiation process. The empathy phenomenon—one side stands in the shoes of the other and tries to understand (if not to share) its views—rarely operates. The moral gap created by the hostage-taking act is an element structuring the negotiation in terms of relational incompatibility and raises a major obstacle to the implementation of a mechanism of exchange and concessions. Thus, the negotiated package is at the same time a necessary tool but extremely difficult to set up. Because negotiation is the process of combining divergent positions into a joint decision, the first challenge when negotiating with terrorists is to establish common rules with people who reject all the rules by which the others act. Furthermore, this is a negotiation under conditions of high asymmetry because, for instance with fundamentalists, negotiators receive their instructions from their government, while jihadists consider that they receive their own orders directly from God.
The negotiation process taken as a whole may be broken down into three stages: prenegotiation, the establishment of a formula for a possible agreement, and fine-tuning on each of the issues kept for discussion.
The prenegotiation stage requires the utmost diplomacy because it takes place during the first hours after hostage taking, and this is the time that most of the killings of hostages occur. The brutal change introduced by the hostage taking brings uncertainty to both sides even if the operation has been extremely well planned because no one knows for sure how the other and the hostages are going to react. The situation has to be stabilized, a channel of communication established, a crisis management group created, and a negotiation team selected. Then the legal authorities have to make sure that the hostages are alive. This is a phase of active listening with the purpose of gathering intelligence in order to prepare the coming negotiation.
The second stage consists of agreeing on a list of issues that can be accepted for negotiation—in other words, a formula. It is often a protracted phase because seldom does a ZOPA (zone of potential agreement) naturally come out from combining both ranges of demand and offer. Furthermore, terrorists often have demands that governments normally cannot meet, such as providing weapons and making public apologies.
Time plays an important role, working at the beginning against the terrorists and after a period of time turning to their advantage, especially because of public opinion and pressure from the families of the hostages who expect the government to solve the problem. Sometimes terrorists escalate their demands, which they link at each stage with a deadline to add pressure. As a rule, many obstacles stand in the way of the negotiation because terrorists tend to think that some governments are able to pay any amount of money to get their own nationals back.
The third stage deals with fine-tuning each of the issues that both parties have accepted. It is very much of a zero-sum game where all sorts of ploys may be used to cheat the other or reduce the cost of the concessions or the risk of being caught afterward. For instance, the authorities might pay with counterfeit money or hand over outdated medicine or equipment that does not work properly. Kidnappers might kill hostages to avoid releasing someone who can later help the authorities discover their hideout. A positive-sum game may thus be turned in a moment into a lose-lose outcome. Sometimes if no MHS (mutually hurting stalemate) takes place, the negotiation may be deadlocked for years. If a situation is painful for both sides and increasingly unbearable, the pain has a positive effect because it gives the sides an incentive to restore negotiation. Thus, what can be done is first to create the conditions for a MHS by increasing the shared pain (Zartman, 2000; Faure, 2012).
Each stage of the process has its own goals and rationale and has to be dealt with using its own specific tactics. For instance, the prenegotiation stage does not require any discussion on the substance of the negotiation; it is to establish the conditions for negotiating. The second phase enables building the structure of a possible deal. Creativity may be important at that level, and credibility and commitment are essential tools in this complex phase. The third phase is highly distributive. Bluffing, deadlocks, and unexpected events feed the process. Even if a minimum necessary level of trust has been achieved, anything may happen at this stage.
As it is with terrorist action, the threat organizes the interaction. On one side, the authorities are facing the risk of having the hostages killed. On the other side, the terrorists are often under the constant threat of an assault. Each side tries to modify the situation in a more favorable way in order to have a better bargaining position. Terrorists take measures to protect themselves against a possible storming and strengthen their commitment by sometimes killing one or several hostages. The authorities try to put all sorts of pressure on the perpetrators to lower their level of expectation and weaken them through harassment, exhausting them, and depriving them of sleep.
A traditional way to improve one’s bargaining position is to buy time to collect strategic information. On the authorities’ side, it means, for instance, using microphones and laser systems to listen to conversations or introducing hidden bugs in the place. This is what was done with the Lima hostage case: microphones were carefully hidden in chess wooden pieces. For terrorists, it means having accomplices among the onlookers, the media covering the event, or even among the hostages.
When the reputation of the counterparts make them untrustworthy or merciless, it may authorize behaviors that would otherwise not be present in a negotiation such as lying, playing tricks, manipulating, and using deception. “We should not be constrained by Boy Scout ethics in an immoral world,” stated Kenneth Adelman, former assistant to the US secretary of defense. Terrorist groups do not care about the requirements of the Geneva Convention. A number of people highly familiar with this type of negotiation, such as heads of police, believe that hostage takers should be promised everything and delivered nothing (Miller, 1980). Thus, not only the final purpose of the negotiation but the quality of the counterpart may morally justify lying and cheating. The role of a negotiator may be to distract the enemy while the legal authorities are preparing to attack them. However, if the police have to deal later with similar cases, the question of its credibility will be raised. If there is not a minimum amount of credibility among the parties, no serious and effective negotiation can be carried out.
Any hostage-taking negotiation develops under a high degree of uncertainty as the process may lead to an agreement but may also end up triggering an escalation in commitments, demands, level of threat, or violence (Zartman and Faure, 2005). On occasion, it may also lead to the surrender of the hostage takers or their escape. Predictability about terrorist behavior is extremely difficult, for one of the most important causal variables is the psychological-ideological profile of the terrorist group. How sensitive a fundamentalist group may be to arguments such as the reputation of Islam, the idea of fair justice, or the principle according to which Muslims should not take women as hostages is an important issue. Furthermore, terrorists, when captured, are cautious about releasing unnecessary information and may deliver misleading information to gain time and help their accomplices realize that they are no longer free to move on with their projects. When possible, terrorists avoid dealing with professional negotiators for fear of having them “read their minds.” Al Qaeda provides training on these issues so that its members can keep the upper hand even when they are in a difficult position. Nonetheless, some models have been developed to help predict the outcome in hostage-taking incidents, giving invaluable support to negotiators (Wilson, 2000).
SWAT (special weapons and tactics) teams, tactical units trained to perform high-risk operations, are specialized in handling terrorist matters. They turn to elaborate methods and techniques in order to intervene effectively, particularly with hostage takers (Davidson, 2002; Lanceley, 1999; McMains & Mullins, 2001; Thomson, 2001). Here is a seven-stage process developed by a French organization when dealing with a barricade-siege situation:
These are the basic rules and techniques to enable the negotiators to create the process for the negotiation. Then the issue has to be dealt with according to the three-phase model: a prenegotiation, the establishment of a formula, and the fine-tuning on each of the issues.
Negotiating with rogue states is a variation of negotiating with terrorists. It raises many questions starting with the definition of a rogue state. It is a controversial label because it sometimes includes dictatorships terrorizing only their own populations. A rogue state may be defined as a country that does not abide by international rules: it may disseminate weapons of mass destruction, export drugs, sponsor terrorist groups, or engage in organized crime. At least a dozen countries have been associated with this concept, sometimes briefly, including North Korea, Iran, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar. Some governments have been so infiltrated by terrorists that there is de facto collusion between the country and the terrorist group. This is the case with Mali and AQIM, for instance, concerning Western hostages detained in the Sahara/Sahel.
The term rogue state was coined in the United States and has been much debated. It has at times been assumed that the United States uses it to refer to any country it has had serious troubles with. In the same wake, some countries such as Iran have labeled the United States and Israel as rogue states.
Rogue states develop two types of activities that qualify them for this designation:
Originally governments faced a dilemma: Should they engage rogue states through negotiations or apply the no negotiation doctrine and try to isolate them? They are now engaging more and more with these states under the formula of “talking” to them instead of “negotiating.” In reality, they discretely negotiate even with countries they have no diplomatic relations with. Demonization comes only when discussions lead nowhere and governments look for an excuse to resort to other means of action.
Probably the oldest negotiation with a rogue state recorded is between the United Nations represented by an American general and a North Korean general in Panmunjom for going beyond the armistice agreement. Here is a description of the process:
The American general and the North Korean general glared at each other across the table and the only sound was the wind howling across the barren hills outside their hut. . . . They sat there, arms folded for 4½ hours. Not a word. Finally Gen. Ri got up, walked out and drove away. It was the 289th meeting of the Korean Military Armistice Commission at the truce village of Panmunjom and set a record as the longest such meeting since the Korean War ended July 27, 1953. The generals had been there 11 hours and 35 minutes. Neither ate or went to the toilet in all the time. Delegates to such meetings may leave the room only with a formal adjournment proposal. (Rubin and Brown, 1975)
Several characteristics distinguish these negotiations from more usual ones: the question of accountability, the trust issue, and the seizure of the historical moment. Rogue states, like any other state, are supposed to be accountable to two types of audiences: their own people and the international community. Dictatorships do not mind fulfilling the first type of obligation. However, there is still the rest of the world to deal with. If they were totally isolated, they would be totally free but weak. Therefore, they need allies or close friends, but as soon as they have some, they are accountable to them. Thus, they cannot act beyond a certain limit if they do not want to harm the reputation of their ally. This is, for instance, the case for North Korea with China.
The issue of trust is challenging. There should be some trust built, at least concerning the implementation of the agreement. On occasion, it may work, such as with the negotiations between the United Kingdom and Sinn Féin. This is not the case with counterparts such as North Korea or Iran, however. If the counterpart is not perceived as trustworthy, there is little chance of striking a deal, and the negotiation turns into a game of deception.
Sometimes history provides a chance for achieving something that otherwise would not be possible. Anwar El-Sadat, the Egyptian leader, made this historical gesture with his visit to Israel and speech before the Knesset in Jerusalem in 1977. Chancellor Helmut Kohl did something of similar importance when giving up the deutsche mark for the euro in order to strengthen European ties. In the area of terrorism, this sort of historical gesture was made when United Kingdom and the Sinn Féin achieved peace with the Good Friday Agreement on the Northern Ireland issue.
There are other options than engaging terrorists, such as appeasement, rollback, and containment. However, the two first are much riskier because they may be interpreted as signs of weakness and open the path to escalation. The containment strategy may be productive as a first step in a process that will be concluded by some kind of negotiation. Containment could be viewed as a condition to bring both sides to the negotiation table because of the incurred costs of the status quo. Containment may entail extremely high costs, and the consequences for the terrorist group may be harmful to its own purpose and members, which is a typical situation of mutually hurting stalemate (MHS). This was, for instance, the case in Egypt with the Gamaa al Islamiyya, an Islamist movement responsible for killing hundreds of Egyptian police, soldiers, and civilians and dozens of foreign tourists. In this case, the negotiated outcome was that the terrorist organization renounced the ideology of violence so that the government would release most of its members who were held as prisoners (Goerzig, 2011).
Victims of terrorists are most often killed not for what they have done but for who they are. Thus, they bear consequences of realities on which they have neither responsibility nor control. Psychologically this is one of the most difficult issues. Usually objects of negotiations do not speak, but in this very specific situation, the people kept as hostages can tell something about the way they lived during their captivity.
Two periods can be distinguished: during the confinement and after liberation. The period of time they are secluded can last from a few days to a few years. For instance, the Israeli soldier referred to previously, Gilad Shalit, was kept hostage for over five years, and Terry Anderson, a kidnapped American journalist, was held for almost seven years in Lebanon. FARC hostages have been kept in the jungle of southern Colombia for over ten years—one of them for thirteen years. Some of the captives are decently treated; many others are treated inhumanely: solitary confinement, always attached and sometimes chained, blindfolded, underfed, with no elementary hygiene conditions, eaten by insects, with no light, beaten, tortured, victims of casual sadism and simulated executions. Some did not speak or know anything about the world outside their confinement for years. In quite a few situations, especially in the Middle East, hostages are sold from a first terrorist group to a second, then to a third, and sometimes to even more. This instability and uncertainty bring additional stress to captives, who realize that they are just bargaining chips. It contributes to a great extent to the dehumanization of the hostages.
In addition to the fact that years of their lives have been stolen, they will never return to a normal life and will have psychological sequelae. Constant fear, loss of the notion of time, sensory deprivation, and absence of intimacy have long-term consequences. Once freed, some hostages are unable to speak or sleep. In all cases, they went through one of the most traumatic experience humans can endure. Some find it extremely challenging to readjust to social life, even to family life. Some suffer from phobias, face recurrent nightmares, are subject to an extremely high level of irritability, cannot develop any trust, and may become paranoid.
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.
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 sympathy 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.
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.
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