History of terrorism offers lessons on conflicts Sunday, May 31, 2009 Reviewed by Rory Miller Talking To Terrorists Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country
By John Bew, Martyn Frampton and Inigo Gurruchaga
Hurst & Company, €19.20
From the outset, the authors of this nicely produced and well written work are determined to stress ‘‘what the book is not’’. It is not an attempt to fit the Basque conflict into ‘‘a Northern Irish-shaped box’’.
Nor, despite its title, is it written with a ‘‘half an eye trained on Hamas or Farc’’, or any other terror group for that matter.
Instead, it provides an account of events in the North over the last 30 years, alongside a similar account of events in the Basque country over the same period. In the process, we are introduced to the key points at which the Spanish, British and Irish governments have engaged terrorists in the two longest running violent conflicts in western Europe in the last 40 years.
We see the direct, ‘‘official’’ negotiations, as well as the secret back-channel communications, undertaken regularly over recent decades by shadowy intermediaries, anonymous spooks, and gritty trade unionists, clergymen and journalists.
It shows just how important these behind-the-scenes activities have been in both the Spanish and Irish cases. It also shows how, at times, some emissaries have overstepped their mandate and made promises they knew governments couldn’t keep, in an effort to safeguard the process from the impulses of their political masters.
The section on Eta will be less familiar to most Irish readers, but it does a fine job of telling the story of the group’s roots in republican nationalism, its role under the Franco dictatorship, its own evolving ‘Long War’ strategy, and the central government’s ruthless response to the Eta challenge.
Early on, the authors quote the warning of French writer Régis Debray, that ‘‘nine out of ten political errors result from reasoning by analogy’’. Determined not to fall into this trap, they do their best to keep this an analogy-free zone.
One can appreciate their attempt not to join the long line of peace-process pundits, politicians and professors who argue for ‘‘engagement’’ and ‘‘inclusiveness’’ all over the world on the basis of the Irish example. But analogy, if done well, can be hugely instructive. Edward Gibbon saw his monumental historical study, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as more than a theoretical work, and hoped that his story of why and how the Roman Empire collapsed could be ‘‘usefully applied to the instruction of the present age’’.
Moreover, try as they might, on a topic like this the authors can’t get away from analogy or its more respectable cousin, comparative analysis, and in the short concluding chapter they finally succumb. Here they provide an important and illuminating, if somewhat brief, discussion of the ‘‘lessons’’ of both conflicts.
We are reminded of the ‘‘wider democratic context’’ to achieving peace and the ‘‘impact of hard power’’. In regard to the latter, they argue that it is ‘‘highly misleading’’ to detach the Northern Irish peace process of the 1990s from the British military/security strategy that preceded it.
The same is true of the Spanish case. Eta is on its knees at the moment, in no small part because of the success of the relentless war waged against it by the Spanish state. As the authors conclude, the bottom line is this: talking to terrorists can be an important part of any peace agreement. But it is not, as they say, ‘‘a magic solution’’.
Other factors are no less important and, indeed, it is only when terrorists accept that they must stop being terrorists, renounce violence and become part of the democratic process that things can move forward. Perhaps the best lesson that one can draw from this book is that having accepted, albeit at times grudgingly, this reality, Sinn Féin now sits at the centre of democratic politics in the North.
For its part, Eta and its political wing have refused to renounce violence, and are now more marginal and irrelevant than ever before. There is no doubt that the legions of civil servants, political advisers, security officials and self-appointed mediators who are fixated on talking to terrorists as the only prescription for conflict resolution will try to dismiss the subtleties of these arguments.
They will continue to rack their brains, desperately trying to find a way to bend the facts to fit their own political agendas and, dare one say it, egos. Hopefully, this book will make their efforts that little bit harder.
Dr Rory Miller is a senior lecturer in Middle East & Mediterranean Studies at King’s College, London
|
Text-Only