For the past few days I’ve been in London, where I was presenting a paper at the Counter Terror Expo. I had the privilege to sit-in on other talks far more interesting than mine revolving around British preparations for the Summer Olympics; strategies to counteract terrorist charities; and very practical tactical approaches to the counter terror fight.
A few items jumped out at me during the course of the two-day conference which I simply had not known or previously thought about at length. For example, while American counter terror officials will confront terrorist charities and shut them down, the British believe (naively, in my view) that they can excise the terror influence yet preserve the charity. Likewise, while the U.S. Treasury Department is expert at tracking U.S. dollar transactions in order to deny terrorists funding, I had never fully considered the problem of laundering such transactions via the Mexican Peso, an increasing problem especially given the interplay between terrorists and drug gangs and the prevalence of informal Peso transactions in the American southwest.
Perhaps the most important fact I learned was that British security officials believe that their pact with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) may be unraveling. British intelligence and counter terror officials are now tracking and interrupting more IRA terror planning that at any time since before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The problem is not simply IRA dissidents, as some reports suggest, but mainstream IRA upset that their goals are not being fully met through the political process. The reason why the collapse of the IRA model is so important is because it has increasingly been the key justification for negotiation with terrorists. When former Sen. George Mitchell took over as President Obama’s Middle East envoy, he repeatedly justified Obama administration actions with the IRA analogy. “In a sense, in Northern Ireland, we had about 700 days of failure and one day of success,” Mitchell remarked in 2010. The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl noted that there was seldom a press conference in which Mitchell did not make reference to the Northern Ireland peace process as a model and inspiration. German diplomats have also cited the IRA model to justify their engagement with Hezbollah, and British and American diplomats have cited the Northern Ireland process to justify negotiation with the Taliban.
The analogy has always been faulty. The IRA never had a Pakistan or Iran to support it, nor was it committed to wiping Great Britain from the map. The IRA may have been noxious, but its basic platform did not seek to deny women schooling. Still, if the British could bite their lower lip, talk to terrorist enemies, and strike a deal, why couldn’t other Europeans or Americans?
With the IRA’s resurgence, hopefully the arguments for engaging and appeasing terrorists can be put to rest. The Northern Ireland process rewarded IRA violence and may have brought some quiet. But just as terrorist leaders like Muammar Qaddafi never change their stripes no matter how much money they donate to British universities or how they enrich Western diplomats, terrorist groups never fully embrace rule-of-law and the democratic process. Rather, they abide by the philosophy so elegantly stated by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: ‘Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it as far as you need, and then you get off.’ It’s time Western policymakers deny them entry in the first place, rather than fall all over themselves to provide free tickets.
I think the IRA has turned into an Irish version of the Mafia.
I agree that the Northern Ireland model is both over discussed and not very useful when discussing how to deal with terrorism in general. This is basically because of the tendency to spin of the politicians involved–particularly those in Dublin and London. But the Northern Ireland conflict is the closest conflict to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While it is true that the IRA never proposed to abolish Great Britain, they would have abolished the UK by abolishing Northern Ireland leaving unionists with the choice of living under foreign rule or moving across the Irish Sea to Britain. For unionists this was the equivalent of abolishing Israel and giving Israeli Jews the choice of living under Arab rule or moving to America. Most unionists have never lived in Britain, which today has a distinctly different culture from Northern Ireland.
Careful with the terminology here. The IRA as the world knows it (i.e. Provisional IRA) has effectively stood down, with major acts of decommissioning; its political wing, Sinn Fein, is the largest Irish Nationalist party in Northern Ireland Government. What the police and security services are dealing with now are those minority dissenting republican paramilitary elements that rejected the political strategy of the Provisional IRA. But the way you describe it above could lend some readers believing that we're on the verge of a collapse and the Provisional IRA will return. There will be no collapse (Sinn Fein have too much power now, the British and Irish Governments are united on all these efforts), and there will be no return of the Provisional IRA on the streets.r nr nI do agree with you re faulty analolgy between Northern Ireland and Mitchell's efforts in the Middle East. You are correct — without the consensus of the external/exogenous actors in that conflict, internal efforts (or parachuting diplomats from abroad) will have limited successes. Now, in a peace process both are required. But if one of those elements are absent (as is the current case in the Middle East), then there will be hundreds (nay, thousands?) more days of failure before success.
First and foremost, “keep it simple, and not a bit simpler.” Einstein once said … and to echo off that point: If one negotiates with stateless terrorist, one demonstrates weakness! And the terrorist laugh at this soft appeasement approach. Essentially, they laugh at us! And the ONLY … thing they understand and respect is force and strength! For example, just take a walk in their shoes, and ask yourself that if they had the upperhand would they cut us a break? And if you think they would, your thinking becomes folly! One ONLY has to understand that when the terrorist want to negotiate, it is because they are beaten down, on the run and seeking to tactically buy time! The T Factor … in order to regroup and restrengthen their base. In other words, if one understands … terrorist ideology, with how they THINK. Thus, regarding ideas, nothing can BLIND a person more than IDEOLGIES. Therefore, rather than think like an empty suit politician, we MUST … never let up thinking like professional Warriors in our war against terrorist, simply because … as one has their spring picnic … our enemy, the terrorist are studying The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, 500 Before Christ (BC). Honorably, William M. Seddon Sr, MS, CAS