Step 6
Protect the Process from the Effects of Violence
Recognize the Inevitability of Violence
Violence during the negotiations is inevitable. If the mediator does a good job of facilitating the talks and the parties end up discussing a peace agreement, spoiler groups will use violence in an effort to derail the movement toward settlement. If, by contrast, the talks are riddled with angry exchanges and denunciations and lead nowhere, one or more parties will use violence in the streets to express its frustration or seek to force concessions from its counterpart at the bargaining table.
Not only is violence inevitable, it is also highly likely that the level of violence will intensify during negotiations. It will grow for numerous reasons: discipline among the ranks of fighters on all sides will decay in the absence of “hot” war; former full-time combatants have yet to be integrated into the state’s forces or reintegrated into society and still retain their weapons; the security forces may be reducing their presence on the street as agreed in the ongoing negotiations; or, paradoxical y, members of the public feel safe enough to return to the streets and vent their fears and animosities, participating in demonstrations that may turn into riots.
Whatever the source and form of the violence, the mediator or negotiator must limit its impact on the peace process if that process is to continue. Even robust processes can be undone by persistent outbreaks of violence, and fragile processes can col apse when buffeted by a single incident. The most effective tools with which to protect the process from the effects of violence are a sense of proportion, a clearly understood system of investigating and punishing violations of commitments, and the rule of law. Mediators can also sometimes use the outrage generated by violence to bolster the peace process.
The long-term goal should be to remove the incentives for violence. This is no easy task, to say the least. But one can move gradual y toward that goal by consistently and publicly condemning outbreaks of violence by either side and making it clear that the perpetrators are losing, rather than gaining, leverage in the peace process as a result of their actions.
Do Not Overreact but Do Enforce Consequences
Given that violence is inevitable, it is usual y unwise to terminate a peace process because of a single high-profile incident or even a short series of less well-publicized incidents committed by a party to the talks. The political capital, diplomatic prestige, and other scarce resources that have been invested into the peace process should not be frittered away on public or political posturing to assert that one or more parties can no longer be trusted to be a part of the peace process. Talking to terrorists is an inherently messy and mistrustful business, and violations of cease-fires and other commitments to eschew violence must be expected. If one is trying to make the process inclusive, the last thing one wants to do is to expel participants.
But that is not to say that clear lines between acceptable and unacceptable behavior should not be created, nor that infractions of those lines should not be punished. To impose no costs is to encourage hardliners to transgress again and again.
Create a process for investigating violations and deciding penalties, and make sure that all parties explicitly—if not enthusiastical y—accept that process. Ideal y, the process should be established early on in the talks, but in some cases it may have to be improvised later on. One of the ground rules in Northern Ireland was that an al egation of noncompliance with the talks’ guiding principles would be referred to the governments for decision; and London and Dublin were obliged to consider the views of all of the participants. But no rule had been established for the procedure to be fol owed when a violation was al eged, so Mitchell made one up: a written al egation would be circulated one day and a written response produced overnight; the accuser and al eged violators would have thirty minutes on the fol owing day to makes their cases, fol owed by a question-and-answer session and a general discussion; then the governments would decide. 38
Whatever penalties are imposed for a violation of the ground rules, they should not be so severe that they automatical y destroy the process. Penalties might include public criticism, stopping diplomatic contacts, and temporary suspension from participation in the negotiations. Readmittance to the talks can be made contingent on the suspended party committing no further violence in the interim.
Although the temporary expulsions of the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and Sinn Fein fol owing murders committed by their military wings were dismissed by some as “a spell in the sin bin,” they were the “minimum action required to justify claims that the Mitchell principles would be enforced. The acceptance of the suspension by the UDP and Sinn Fein, however truculently, indicated their determination to remain within the peace process.”39
A mediator or negotiator should keep the door open as long as possible for a PAG that seems to have a genuine interest in recommencing negotiations and for groups that have previously opposed participation in the talks but now have indicated an interest in renouncing violence and engaging in the political process. But the door should be closed firmly once a PAG shows itself to be unwilling or unable to refrain from violence. ETA has entered into negotiations at various times over several decades but has often undermined those talks by its attachment to violence. In March 2006, for instance, ETA declared a “permanent cease-fire” and expressed interest in peace negotiations, but as those talks progressed ETA undertook a number of provocative acts (such as stealing three hundred weapons and ammunition) and then detonated a bomb at Madrid airport, kil ing two people and prompting the Spanish government to publicly denounce the explosion and withdraw from the talks. Four years later, when ETA asked for talks, the Spanish government rejected the request.
The mediator must never appear to be rewarding violence. For instance, do not give the impression that violence has succeeded in generating a concession. Even if an act of violence has, in fact, spurred a concession, the announcement of that concession should be delayed as long as possible so that the causal connection is not obvious.
Don’t Blame the Negotiators for the Actions of Spoilers
An engaged movement itself may reject violence, but new groups may form from rejectionist remnants. Such fringe players may actual y increase their use of violence, escalating in order to derail promising peace talks. The IRA’s acceptance of the terms of the Good Friday Agreement led to the emergence to two splinter groups, the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA, who opposed any deal with the Unionists. Palestinian attempts to form a united front in negotiations with Israel have long been undone by the readiness of factions to splinter off from the main movement to protest what they see as unacceptable concessions. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), for instance, withdrew from the executive committee of the PLO in 1974 because it felt that the PLO had abandoned its goal of destroying Israel. In the five preceding years, the PFLP itself had suffered no fewer than three breakaway groups.
Even if splinters do not emerge as rival movements, spoilers within the group are a constant problem for any attempt to end a conflict. Terrorist groups are particularly likely to produce “total spoilers”—factions that seek total power and cannot be swayed by limited concessions.40 A terrorist leadership faces a dilemma when it cannot completely control its own members, even if the leadership itself has genuinely embraced peace. Admitting a lack of control weakens the leaders’ internal credibility and discredits them as a negotiating partner because they cannot claim to end the violence. Pretending continued control leaves them open to charges that they deliberately incited the violence.
The mediator or negotiator should be sensitive to this dilemma and seek not to embarrass the terrorist negotiator by insisting it halt violence that it cannot control. But the mediator must not excuse a PAG that may, in fact, have at least some responsibility for the violence. The question of guilt by association is a tricky one, because the lines separating political wings from military wings, splinter groups, and spoilers are typical y very blurred, and may be entirely fictitious. Consequently, the mediator should seek to careful y distinguish between attacks launched by the PAG itself and by splinter groups or spoilers, but also press the terrorist negotiator to apologize for the former and repudiate the latter. Condemnation of spoiler violence as “illegitimate” by the PAG does make a difference, especial y if the PAG is publicly committed to a peace process that enjoys popular support and strong backing from external powers.41
Involve the Community in Dealing with Violence through the Rule of Law
Whenever possible, deal with violence through the police and the courts. Doing so criminalizes it and builds support for the rule of law—but only if the police are seen as evenhanded and the courts as independent. Thus, efforts to deal with violence must go hand in hand with efforts to reform the police and judicial system so that all sides see them as neutral and effective. This is easier said than done, of course (and one of the key issues in the ongoing negotiations is sure to be reform of the security services), but it points to the need to tackle police reform earlier rather than later in the peace process. The sooner that reforms are implemented, or even just seriously discussed, the quicker will the terrorists’ constituency be prepared to turn to and work with the police and courts to deal with violence.
Take the Opportunities That Violence Provides
Some incidents of violence actual y help the peace process by galvanizing opposition to the groups and individuals who refuse to lay down their arms. In August 1998, the Real IRA planted a bomb in the town of Omagh that kil ed twenty-eight shoppers, Protestants and Catholics alike. Coming in the wake of referendums supporting the Good Friday Agreement, the bombing was regarded by almost all parties as a despicable and desperate attempt to undermine the peace process. The IRA condemned the bombing unequivocal y, and both the Irish and British introduced tighter antiterrorism measures without any popular protest. The year before, ETA’s murder of a local Basque politician was the tipping point for hundreds of thousands of Basques, who for the first time demonstrated in opposition to ETA’s campaign of violence.
Why some atrocities should prompt such popular disgust, but not others, is difficult to explain. It may be that “what converts outrage to action is condemnation within the context, or at least within the realistic hope, that agreement is possible and that further violence could threaten it. . . . Outrage without a mechanism to enforce it fades away. . . . A peace process, or the prospect of one, creates a mechanism for connecting anger to the political process. . . . The most important effect of catalytic atrocities is not their ability to end spoiler violence. It is that they enable the middle ground to find its voice at a time when the voice of moderation could make a difference.”42
Sometimes violence perpetrated by one terrorist organization can increase pressure on another to abandon violence and enter negotiations. When Islamic terrorists set off a series of bombs in Madrid in March 2004, they not only kil ed 191 people but also provoked such condemnation of terrorism in all its forms from all quarters of Spain that ETA—which had been initial y blamed for the attacks by the Spanish government but, in fact, was entirely uninvolved—appears to have decided to call a halt to the use of violence, at least for a while. Two years later it declared a “unilateral cease-fire,” though that lasted only nine months.
The lesson for mediators is to take advantage of those opportunities when they present themselves, to be alert to when the outrage is there, and to harness it to advance the peace process.