Talking with Insurgents: A Guide for the Perplexed

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For details on Iraq's Anbar Awakening see, John McCary, “The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives,” The Washington Quarterly 32, no. 1 (January 2009): 43–59, http://www.twq.com/09winter/docs/09jan_McCary.pdf. 2. For similar work see, Daniel Byman, “The Decision to Begin Talks with Terrorists: Lessons for Policymakers,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29, no. 5 (2006): 403–414. Terrorist groups and insurgent groups overlap tremendously in practice. The primary differences are due to the greater size and capabilities of insurgent organizations. Almost all insurgent organizations use terrorism as a tactic, but they also use guerrilla warfare and conduct extensive political mobilization. Some groups are too small or weak to use these methods and thus rely almost exclusively on terrorism. Usually those groups seek to become insurgencies and use terrorism as a tool to do so. Thus, many of the insights that apply to talking with terrorist groups apply to talking with insurgent movements. Some groups are on the borderline between insurgencies and terrorist groups like Hamas, the Fatah movement, and the Provisional IRA. 3. For interesting works on this subject, see Peter C. Sederberg, “Conciliation as Counter-Terrorist Strategy,” Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 3 (1995): 295–312. 4. See Kristen Sparre, “Megaphone Diplomacy in the Northern Irish Peace Process: Squaring the Circle by Talking to Terrorists through Journalists,” The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 6, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 88–104. 5. Martha Crenshaw notes that these are the two primary reasons for a terrorist group's decline. See Martha Crenshaw, “How Terrorism Declines,” Terrorism Research and Public Policy 3, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 69–-87, “How Terrorism Ends,” United States Institute of Peace Special Report, no. 48 (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, May 25, 1999), pp. 2–4, http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr990525.pdf. 6. Crenshaw, “How Terrorism Declines,” p. 86. 7. Sara Roy, “Hamas and the Transformation of Political Islam in Palestine,” Current History 102, 110. 660 (January 2003): 17. 8. Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response (Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 2005), p. 90. 9. Sederberg, “Conciliation as Counter-Terrorist Strategy,” p. 308. 10. Stephen John Stedman, “Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes,” International Security 22, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 10–11. 11. Ewen MacAskill, “UK Ponders Taking with Hamas and Hizbullah,” The Guardian, May 20, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/20/israel.foreignpolicy. 12. See, I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 13. Sederberg, “Conciliation as Counter-Terrorist Strategy,” p. 306. 14. Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy, pp. 90–91. 15. Seth Jones, Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008), pp. 37–66, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG595.pdf. 16. Seth Jones, Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008), pp. 37–66, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG595.pdf, p. 41. 17. Steven Simon, “The Price of the Surge,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3 (May/June 2008), http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501faessay87305/steven-simon/the-price-of-the-surge.html. 18. Jones, Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, pp. 54–61. Additional informationNotes on contributorsDaniel BymanDaniel Byman is the director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, and a member of TWQ's editorial board