Jonathan Powell: We will talk to Mullah Omar, and maybe to Bin Laden too
[Jonathan Powell was chief of staff to Tony Blair 1997-2007. His book Great Hatred Little Room, about the Northern Ireland peace process, is published by The Bodley Head Ltd.]
It has become fashionable for western leaders, including generals, to talk about talking to the Taliban. But no one seems to be able to quite bring themselves to actually do it. That is understandable. It is almost impossible for a democratic government to fight an insurgency, losing lives in the process, and at the same time meet their representatives and negotiate.
If it had been known that John Major's government was sending messages to the army council of the IRA in 1993, at the very same time that the IRA were blowing up children in Warrington, there would have been outrage. And yet those secret contacts took place and led, in time, to the Northern Ireland peace process.
There seems to be a pattern to the west's behaviour when we face terrorist campaigns. First we fight them militarily, then we talk to them, and eventually we treat them as statesmen. That is what Britain did with Menachem Begin and the Irgun in Israel, with Jomo Kenyatta and the Mau Mau in Kenya and with Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus.
I participated in one of these transformations of British policy. When, as Tony Blair's chief of staff, I first met Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in Belfast in 1997, I was not well disposed to the IRA. They had shot my father during the second world war, and my brother, who had worked for Margaret Thatcher, had been on an IRA death list for eight years. I refused to shake their hands; a gesture I regret. Now McGuinness is deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and in the forefront of facing down those dissident republicans who are still committed to the terrorist campaign there.
The process of reconciliation with terrorist groups is not unique to Britain...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
It has become fashionable for western leaders, including generals, to talk about talking to the Taliban. But no one seems to be able to quite bring themselves to actually do it. That is understandable. It is almost impossible for a democratic government to fight an insurgency, losing lives in the process, and at the same time meet their representatives and negotiate.
If it had been known that John Major's government was sending messages to the army council of the IRA in 1993, at the very same time that the IRA were blowing up children in Warrington, there would have been outrage. And yet those secret contacts took place and led, in time, to the Northern Ireland peace process.
There seems to be a pattern to the west's behaviour when we face terrorist campaigns. First we fight them militarily, then we talk to them, and eventually we treat them as statesmen. That is what Britain did with Menachem Begin and the Irgun in Israel, with Jomo Kenyatta and the Mau Mau in Kenya and with Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus.
I participated in one of these transformations of British policy. When, as Tony Blair's chief of staff, I first met Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in Belfast in 1997, I was not well disposed to the IRA. They had shot my father during the second world war, and my brother, who had worked for Margaret Thatcher, had been on an IRA death list for eight years. I refused to shake their hands; a gesture I regret. Now McGuinness is deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and in the forefront of facing down those dissident republicans who are still committed to the terrorist campaign there.
The process of reconciliation with terrorist groups is not unique to Britain...