 |
|
Tim Sonnreich, November 2005. Part 1 - Negotiating with the Insurgency Following on the theme from my previous article on torture debates, I wanted to write an article to help people effectively advocate what I think is intuitively the 'easy side' of the 'negotiation for the release of hostages' debate. Although my ostensible aim is to develop people's understanding of how to run the 'pro-negotiation' side of the topic, what this article is really about is something far more useful. The real goal is to demonstrate how to analyse the Iraqi insurgency, a critical factor in any debate about the future reconstruction of Iraq, in a far deeper fashion than I think is common. What is the insurgency? Before anyone should try and discuss what to do about the insurgency, they should make sure that they have a proper understanding of what it is. It's remarkable how often I have seen this debate done without anyone trying to provide any serious analysis of who the insurgency is, why people join and what it would take to defeat it. The most common analysis is that the insurgency is filled with hard-core Islamic-fundamentalist lunatics who have abandoned reason and who simply exist for the sole purpose of killing Westerners. Here's a tip folks, anytime you find yourself analysing something in a way that is not only easy enough for George Bush to understand, but actually sounds like something he might say, then chances are that you're being overly simplistic! A workable analysis of the insurgency is that it is made up of three overlapping groups (the percentages are educated guesses). I say 'overlapping' because these groups are not discrete operations, but the categories do represent the principle motivations behind sections of the insurgency, and in particular, behind kidnappings.
Also it's important to note that many of these groups are highly factional or cell-based, simply operating under a common title. This explains how (as I'll demonstrate later) a given group can demonstrate its willingness to negotiate one day, and then the same group (but maybe a different splinter/faction/sub-group) will refuse to negotiate on another occasion. The first group are the ones who get 90% of the media coverage because they commit the most sensational crimes, and because Western governments need them as propaganda tools - judging by some of the speeches I've heard in the last few months, that propaganda is working. This group is best represented by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" (al-Tawhid) group. The vast majority of the 'foreign fighters' (like Zarqawi himself who is Jordanian) would fall under this category too. These guys are the hard core. These are the sort of people who behead hostages live on the internet, and for those who remember the photos of the four American contractors who were chopped into pieces and strung from a bridge in Fallujah - this first group were the people who did that too.
Members of this second group are not simply mindlessly violent, they aren't often suicide bombers and they don't necessarily want to hand Iraq over to bin Laden or someone who shares that sort of vision. Some want to see Iraq become an Iranian style theocracy, others can live with democracy but want the US-led forces out, and some are former Ba'athists (the Americans have forgotten that Ba'athism is an ideology - it doesn't automatically die because Saddam was captured, just as liberal-democracy didn't die after the assassination of Lincoln - and its worth remembering that Ba'athism is still the dominant political ideology in Syria). The final group is the simplest, but most overlooked - the purely criminal. It's sad to say, but wherever there is instability, violence and war, there are people who are willing to profit from the chaos. In the southern Philippines there are 'legitimate' terrorist/nationalist groups like the MILF/MINF and then there is Abu Sayyaf - whose members shift between hostage-taking for profit and religious extremism, and who allegedly pay some recruits a salary to conduct operations! Equally in Northern Ireland there are members of the IRA who are passionately committed to the cause of Irish Catholic independence, but there are also lots of criminals. In fact the IRA's criminal networks are rumoured to be amongst the wealthiest and most entrenched of any of the terrorist-off-shoot criminal gangs. Iraq is little different. It's generally agreed that prior to the most recent invasion Saddam had a standing army of 500,000 men, and as former senior CIA analyst Michael Scheuer argues, the US would have been lucky to have killed 20% of them.1 Until very recently former Iraqi military officers were officially forbidden from joining the new army which left something in the order of 400,000 militarily trained men out of work. So it should come as little surprise that some of these guys will take the risks associated with criminality, given that the payoff is large and the alternatives are few. Ok, that's the basic overview (if you want to know more than that's easy - start with the BBC website's coverage of Iraq, and/or then follow the links in this document). The next question that follows from that analysis is what do they want? What do they want/what can we offer them? There are two simple rules I would set down for any negotiations with insurgents in Iraq:
Obviously that means that not all negotiations will be successful. If Zarqawi asks for all US forces to be removed from the Middle East, or for support for Israel to be cut or anything else wacky, and he's not willing to compromise, then there will be no deal. But here's the first piece of fairly obvious analysis that people often miss. People in that first group of religiously inspired lunatics rarely, if ever, even attempt to negotiate. They don't want to exact concessions; they want America to leave and/or to be humiliated. When American businessman Nick Berg was captured, then beheaded live on the internet, his kidnappers said they were doing it to avenge the treatment of Iraqi prisoners - it was payback.
In other words they made no demands, they wanted to slaughter Berg to make a point. That's deplorable, but it's not a flaw with the pro-negotiation model. It's simply something that is effectively outside the debate. If a group is not interested in negotiation because the only end they seek is murdering their 'enemies' then you can't really debate about whether we should negotiate with them! But if you happen to find that response a little flippant, then maybe you'll be convinced by this slightly more complex answer; the fact is that many of the hostages who end up in the hands of the 1st group - the lunatics - are actually 'sold' to them by members of the 2nd or 3rd group who do the actual kidnapping. This little piece of knowledge significantly strengthens the case for negotiation because it's at this point that we can really save lives. There is evidence to suggest that these 'middle-men-kidnappers' can be persuaded to release hostages before they hand them over to the ultra-extremist groups. In late October 2005 the Guardian's Baghdad correspondent Rory Carroll was kidnapped by elements of Moqtada al-Sadr's organisation and held for 36 hours. His release was negotiated by the Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi (more information on him later) who claims that the kidnappers were divided over using Rory as leverage to get a colleague released from prison, or to sell him to jihadists. So you should be able to see that the pro-negotiation side doesn't have to concede that significant numbers of hostages will still be killed by groups who have no desire to negotiate, because in many instances there is an interim step before the hostage is in the custody of such a group and that leaves open the possibility for intervention. Although Carroll didn't mention any ransom or conditions that were met to secure his release, you can bet that some sort of deal was struck. Under the broad rules I've laid out there are several things that could have been offered without further compromising the overall security of Iraq (such as it currently is). Since it's virtually impossible to negotiate with the first group directly (either they wont negotiate or will only make impossible, uncompromising demands) most of the debate should be focused on those other two groups. The second group generally want politically inspired concessions and the US military's own successful negotiation with the Mehdi Army is a case in point. After weeks of bloody conflict, the US and al Sadr's forces fought themselves to a stalemate. Sadr was holed up in Iman Ali Mosque (one of the most sacred sites for Shia in Iraq) and the US couldn't get them out without sustaining heavy casualties and/or levelling the Mosque (which would simply enrage Muslims and spur hundreds more to join the insurgency). So negotiation was the only option. In the end the US cut a pretty reasonable deal. Al Sadr could stay, but his men had to disarm. The US paid the militiamen in cash for surrendering their weapons ($50 per gun). In return the US agreed to remove all its forces from the Sadr City region of Baghdad and turn over security to the Iraqi army. They also agreed to end air strikes of the city. All in all that's pretty fair. Now a lot of teams will baulk at the idea of proposing that we should give cash to insurgents to get a particular result. Won't they just use that money to fuel the insurgency? Isn't it a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face? No. But thanks for asking. The insurgency is not a phenomenally expensive operation. Small arms and explosives are easily acquired on the black-market. Newsweek reported in 2003 that weapons were so abundant, having spilled out of Saddam's massive military stores, that AK47's were selling for as little as US$5. And as I have already argued, labour is also easily available. But even if it were expensive, there is no shortage of cash already. There are radical groups in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and pretty much all over the Muslim world who are pouring money into groups like Al Qaeda and its brethren in Iraq. Equally there are allegations of direct support for the insurgency by governments in the region. Plus there is still plenty of oil smuggling and trade in contraband to ensure a cash flow to the insurgents. The deal cut with the Mehdi Army saved lives, prevented a battle on sacred ground (which would have poured petrol on the insurgency) and as I'll argue later, negotiation is good for reconstruction efforts in the longer term. Finally, even if governments weren't prepared to pay ransoms to insurgents, many corporations are. Let me simply quote the last few lines of a BBC report:
But yes, the deal with Sadr was not a hostage negotiation, but that's not the point. The point is that it proves that negotiation with these groups is possible and it's not always about money. Sadr's group are a good example of what most of the insurgents are; religio-political groups, which means that they have goals and some of those goals can be met or accommodated. If the US can cut a deal as big and complex as the one made with Sadr (and it worked really well for over a year) then surely smaller deals are eminently doable.
Italy refused and IAI carried out its threat. So these guys aren't fucking around when they take hostages, and at first glance they appear to be more of an example of my first group rather than my second. But remember I said the groups do overlap, so it's complicated - the faction that kidnapped Baldoni may not be the same group that commit every act attributed to IAI.
In September 2004 the two women were released, safe and sound, by the IAI. Italian government officials strenuously denied that any ransom was paid (despite persistent rumours that $1m had changed hands). These rumours wouldn't make a very good example for a debate except that almost a year later the chief negotiator told La Stampa newspaper the full story of how he managed to cut a deal with a bloodthirsty terrorist group, and it's a helluva story! Maurizio Scelli told La Stampa that in exchange for the two Simona's lives, he arranged for four gravely wounded Iraqi insurgents to be smuggled past US military checkpoints and into a hospital where Italian doctors saved their lives! Even more extraordinary is the second part of the deal, which involved covertly transferring four sick children out of Iraq and back to Italy where they received treatment for leukaemia, and then transferred them back to Iraq! All of this was done without the knowledge or cooperation of the US (that was a strict condition of the insurgents). That's a pretty remarkable tale. Hopefully this highlights my earlier point about the overlapping motivations of insurgents. This particular IAI cell wasn't made up of total lunatics, they were people who despite their previous intolerably violent acts, were willing to cut a deal. Negotiating with people like the IAI might seem unsavoury, but the alternative was to risk these two young women suffering the same fate as Enzo Baldoni - and as I'll argue in a moment, the entire fate of Iraqi reconstruction rests on the outcome of incidents like the kidnapping of the "two Simona's". IAI are a great example, because they prove the point that negotiation is possible, that the things being asked for are often doable, and that the outcome can be positive - proving my first rule. However IAI is not a criminal gang. They are not a kidnap-for-ransom gang and they often kill their hostages. This is proof of my second rule because some of the demands these guys make are outrageous and impossible, meaning negotiation is impossible. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. These folks hate the US with a passion and have pledged to carry out attacks inside the continental United States, so it's not hard to imagine how discussions with people like this could be a little difficult. But remember that the pro-negotiation side doesn't have to prove that negotiation always works (because simply trying to kill the insurgents doesn't always work either), they just have to show that on balance it's the better option. I'll show you how to do that in part 2! Back to MAD Homepage |
