Talking to Groups that Use Terror.pdf - United States Institute of Peace

Notes1. The logic here is that terrorists crave attention—for themselves and/or their cause—above all, and that by acknowledging their influence in the conflict, the mediator feedstheir appetite for attention and makes them less likely to commit further attentiongrabbingviolence.2. President Barack Obama entered office in 2009 declaring that his administration wouldconsider dialogue with interlocutors that the preceding administration consideredbeyond the diplomatic pale, yet while the Obama administration has talked withgovernments formerly treated as pariahs by Washington, it has not publicly, at least,talked with terrorist organizations.3. Audrey Kurth Cronin, When Should We Talk to Terrorists? Special Report no. 240(Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, May 2010), 3.4. The manuscript was written with the support of the Smith Richardson Foundation aswell as the United States Institute of Peace. Faure and Zartman have published a book,Negotiating with Terrorists: Strategies, Tactics, and Politics (London: Routledge, 2010),that focuses on hostage situations.5. See, for example, David G. Savage, “Supreme Court Upholds Law against AdvisingTerrorists,” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-terror-20100622,0,5090110.story. The article begins:“The Supreme Court ruled Monday that human rights advocates led by a USC professorcould be prosecuted if they offered advice to a foreign terrorist group, even if the advicewas to settle disputes peacefully.”6. Crocker made his comments at a roundtable discussion of the Supreme Court’s Holderv. Humanitarian Law Project decision held at the United States Institute of Peace,Washington, D.C., on September 10, 2010. See the online report “When Is InternationalPeacemaking Illegal?” http://www.usip.org/events/when-international-peacemakingillegal-the-supreme-court-decision-in-holder-v-humanitarian-la.7. The impact of antiterrorism proscription regimes on mediating peace processes is discussedat length in Veronique Dudouet, Mediating Peace with Proscribed Armed Groups, SpecialReport no. 239 (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, May 2010), 8–11.8. Cronin, When Should We Talk to Terrorists? 4.9. Dudouet, Mediating Peace with Proscribed Armed Groups, 4.10. See Arun Kumar, “Nepal Maoists Were Never Called a Terrorist Outfit: US,” SIFY News,May 15, 2008, http://www.sify.com/news/nepal-maoists-were-never-called-a-terroroutfit-news-international-jegr8kfgcac.html.11. See Fernando Reinares and Rogelio Alonso, “Spain and the ETA,” in Democracy andCounterterrorism: Lessons from the Past, ed. Robert J. Art and Louise Richardson(Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007), 128 and 114.94