Talking to terrorists – it’s a messy mix of soft soap and hard power

There is a crucial difference between talking to terrorists who are on the crest of wave, who believe they have momentum on their side, and those who have been made to believe their strategic commitment to violence is hindering their political aims

IN a few weeks’ time, Spain will mark 50 years since the emergence of ETA as an armed group dedicated to fight for Basque independence. Not that the terrorists have much to celebrate: never before in the past five decades has it been so marginalised. Their attacks have fizzled out and in the elections of March this year to the Basque regional parliament, the two main Spanish parties won 38 seats to the various Basque nationalist parties’ 35.

For the first time since democracy returned to Spain the 1970s, the Basque Country is not ruled by separatists. Is Spain, like us, witnessing the triumph of politics over arms? Certainly, in Spain there has been intense interest in using our Northern peace process as a model for conflict resolution.

And, of all the conflicts around the world, the similarities with the Basque situation are probably the greatest but there have been increasing attempts to apply it to a host of other conflict zones including Iraq, the Middle East, Afghanistan and East Timor, not to mention Sri Lanka.

The new book Talking to Terrorists about the Northern Ireland and Basque situations by young Belfast-born Cambridge history lecturer John Bew (son of the great Paul) and Basque journalist Inigo Gurruchaga – among others – could not, therefore, come at a more appropriate time. Former Taoiseach John Bruton has given it his endorsement.

Although the authors are far from unsympathetic to peacemaking efforts drawing on the Northern experience, they note that, in some places, critics of this tendency to apply the Northern case willy-nilly have been characterised as somehow anti-peace process.

In their case, though, nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, they argue that while the Northern settlement is far from perfect, they inhabit the same world as those who say the situation there is immeasurably better than it was before 1998 and they give appropriate credit to Bertie Ahern, Tony Blair and others.

The dispute is over the version of the peace process that is being sold around the world. Few could disagree with the overall outcome in the North – far, far less violence, a measure of inter-communal trust and an economy back from the dead.

But what are the appropriate lessons to be extrapolated from it? Now that the Stormont assembly is beginning to bed down, isn’t it time for a reassessment of the terms on which peace was made in the first place? Above all, is talking to terrorists, engaging with the extremes, the only means to achieve an end to violence? The need to talk to your enemies, rather than your friends, is deeply engrained in the existing literature of the Northern process. It also happens to fit in with most Irish people’s Christian – or post-Christian – take on the world. It is the justification used by government representatives to talk to all sorts of people around the world who have not disavowed the gun and the bomb.

Bew et al, in fairness to them, don’t reject the notion outright. Indeed, they see some merit in it. But they also raise interesting and difficult questions.

First and foremost, they emphasise that context is everything, and that if the North and the Basque Country show anything it is that there is a crucial difference between talking to terrorists who are on the crest of a wave, who believe they have momentum on their side, and those who have been made to believe their strategic commitment to violence is hindering their political aims.

That’s something the political elites in Dublin and London sometimes conveniently overlook. Before there was any talking to the men of violence, there was a stern and absolute insistence on democratic norms. That went for governments of all colours and persuasions: it was the cordon sanitaire that Charles Haughey defended as rigidly as Mrs Thatcher, if not more so. And that simple, unequivocal demand was crucial in whittling away and reducing the violence in both Spain and the North.

There are, of course, as many differences as similarities between the two cases. In Spain, in spite of the numerous attempts to sell the Irish example – notably the Pact of Lizarra – what has been witnessed has been the slow asphyxiation of ETA by hard power, not cuddles and cups of tea. Legal proscription and the exclusion from the political process of Batasuna, ETA’s mouthpiece, until it participates on the same basis as other parties, raise all sorts of difficult questions.

But for now at least, Spain is celebrating the victory of its constitutional and electoral processes. The ethnic, cultural and linguistic sources of the conflict there, for instance, were largely attended to years before they were comprehensively in the North. The decision of France to cooperate more actively in the prosecution of the security war against ETA has been crucial too.

Here there is a parallel. It was only once there was stability within and between the British and Irish states that progress was able to be achieved and the potency of the conflict reduced.

In the Northern case, this found fruition in the Downing Street Declaration of 1993, which set the parameters for the peace process. The stability provided later by Labour’s huge majority at Westminster and the solidity of the Fianna Fáil-PD coalition were factors too. Like their Spanish counterparts, both states were governed by parties with much greater claims to legitimacy than either Sinn Féin or Batasuna.

But – and few want to dwell on this – hard power has played an indelible role in both conflicts. We have forgotten our own history. Too much analysis of the Northern process starts in the 1990s with the idea that, after 20 years of failure, the Brits adopted a new, radically different approach. Frankly, it is impossible and highly misleading to understand the peace without accounting for the messy years of counter-terrorist activity that preceded it.

YES, it is politic to pretend that the military conflict ended in stalemate, but it is a self-serving fantasy. As every year goes by, as captured so brilliantly in the recent film 50 Dead Men Walking, the extent to which the terrorist organisations were infiltrated becomes clearer.

So, is it always as “good to talk” as is often believed? Bew and his co-authors argue that the case for dialogue would be much stronger if it came with an acknowledgement that it is also sometimes dangerous and counter-productive.

The Irish, British and Spanish governments tried to engage and maintain contact on numerous occasions, with the best of intentions. We mustn’t forget though that the response was often a surge in terrorist violence, an escalation of terrorist ambitions and the undermining of genuine partners for peace. Indeed, it was often Dublin chiding London for naivete for talking to the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s, not the other way around.

So, the picture is a much more complex one than is often portrayed. By dwelling on those complexities, and steadfastly refusing to gloss over them in the pursuit of political correctness, the new Bew and his colleagues have done recent Irish history a great service. They have shattered some illusions with style, proving that the pen is indeed mightier than the Kalashnikov.

‘Talking to Terrorists: Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country’ by John Bew and others is published by Hurst, £15.99