Talking to Terrorists | World View |Axisoflogic.com

Former U.S. President George W. Bush once said, “No nation can negotiate with terrorists, for there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death.” Numerous leaders have made similar statements.

And yet, democratic governments have negotiated with internationally designated terrorist groups, including with the Irish Republican Army, the Basque separatist group ETA and ― making history this week ― the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. On Monday, the Colombian government and the FARC signed a peace deal promising to end a 52-year war. The Colombian people will vote on the agreement Sunday and are expected to approve it.

Both the FARC and the government committed human rights violations and inflicted terror for decades. Many are celebrating the deal as the long-overdue end of a conflict that has left about 220,000 people dead and more than 6 million displaced from their homes. Others are criticizing the deal as too soft on the rebels who, if they confess their crimes, will avoid serving their sentences in jail and will instead have to carry out acts of reparation to their victims.

So when does it make sense to negotiate with terrorists?

Several factors facilitated negotiating with the FARC. First, the group was in a weakened, war-weary state after a brutal U.S.-backed Colombian military offensive that started in 2000. Also, the FARC doesn’t have an apocalyptic goal like, say, the so-called Islamic State. Although its ideology took a backseat to the drug trade over the years, the FARC was born under a banner of rural land distribution reform for the poor. In response, as a part of the pending deal, the government pledged to better support rural communities and to improve land accessibility.

In other words, negotiating with terrorists entails the psychologically and politically challenging concession that, in some cases, they are not simply criminals but also warriors with a cause that can be partially accommodated. Former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wanted the IRA regarded as common criminals. But the government needed to treat the group with more dignity than that before a peace deal could be negotiated.

One fear is that validating terrorists’ political goals also validates their violent means. However, this fear may be unmerited as long as the terrorists make enough concessions (maybe because they’re so weakened) that it’s clear they’re not being validated. Instead, the violent means to their end is being proven wrong, which, of course, is their crucial concession.

Sergio Munoz Bata asserts that U.S. military aid to Colombia ― through an initiative called Plan Colombia ― helped the country gain the upper hand against its FARC rebels, making negotiations possible. However, Bata notes, Plan Colombia was accompanied by egregious human rights violations and a failure to curb the drug trade and thus must be evaluated in its totality.

The peace between the FARC and Colombia is a milestone, but it is also very ambitious and will face hurdles.