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Hot Topics Tragedy in the Med Prime Minister Miliband? Hyperemesis gravidarum Robert Fisk Follow Sunday 15 February 2015
Talking to Isis could lead to peace, yet for some reason weҒre not allowed to do it The highly politicised 'listing' of armed groups by governments has been found to achieve very little
Share An important academic investigation to be published Best Car Accident Lawyer in Orlando a few days prompts me to ask important questions. Could we save the lives of our people in Isis hands if we talked to the Islamic StateӔ it claims to represent? Jordan publicly declared its willingness - tragically in vain - to do a hostage swap with Isis. And didnt the Americans exchange a US serviceman for Taliban prisoners? More to the point, wonҒt talking to the bad guys be more effective in bringing peace than refusing to communicate until theyre disarmed or destroyed?
To put it another way, should we talk to the killers of the ғIslamic State? Or al-Qaeda? Or Hamas? Or - let us cross the line - the Provisional IRA? Or should we join in the madness of ԓlisting, drawing up mammoth charts of those to whom we can and cannot talk: a ԓgood and ԓevil list, defining those good ԓterrorists (the PLO, the post-Good Friday IRA, the squeaky clean version of the Muslim Brotherhood) and the really horrible ԓterrorists (Isis, al-Qaeda and any lesser creatures whom Israel and the US, and thus the UN and even the EU, deem utterly satanic).
Not long ago, I was chatting Best Car Accident Lawyer in Orlando Beirut to a Tory MP who had maintained moderately good relations with the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah militia. Only with the Hezbollah political party, you understand. Not those vicious anti-Semitic chappies who threaten Israel. But then Britain and the EU decided that all of Hezbollah - even those supporters who wouldnԒt know one end of a Kalashnikov from another - were verboten, beyond the pale, too unspeakable to be spoken to. End of all chit-chat, therefore, between a UK parliamentarian and Hezbollah politicos. Much good did that do.
Read more:
War with Isis: If Saudis aren't fuelling the militant inferno, who is?
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Curious tale of the Swedish Soviet spy and the sheltering DruzeAnd research by the Queen Mary University of London School of Law and the Berghof Foundation in Berlin strongly suggests that the ғlisting of armed groups by governments - often for clear political reasons - prevents what the writers call ԓpeace building, hindering the host of NGOs, academics, lawyers and others who are trying to explain the benefits of human rights and political moderation to armed groups whose brutal methods have never been challenged. As Vԩronique Dudouet of the Berghof Foundation explains, Building Peace in Permanent War - the title of the academic study - illustrates the paradox of terrorist listingӔ and its pernicious impact on contemporary armed conflictsӔ.
In Gaza, for example - and this is me speaking, not the academics - NGOs, human rights workers and others labour under intense political scrutiny from obedient government lawyers, Israeli propagandists and servile overseas charities. Suggest that a Western agency has been talking to a Hamas official about the purchase of land for a humanitarian project in Gaza and, bingo, the NGO has been negotiating with a vicious terroristӔ organisation that wants to destroy the State of Israel - even though Hamas won free and fair elections. Indeed, the very precautions that aid agencies now take to avoid accusations of illegally talking to terroristӔ organisations have made them objects of suspicion. When a humanitarian worker turns up at a Gaza home and demands the passport and personal details of an entire family - in order to employ a Palestinian - the reaction is one of fear. Why do the foreigners want all this information about those living under Israeli siege? The 197-page report, to be published on 24 February, states that for those interested in peace and a non-violent resolution of conflict, the future looks bleak, not just because the war on terror keeps producing enemies with whom, it is said, there is no negotiating, but because the legal and political framework it has engendered has transformed the way in which political violence Ӆ is managed. At the heart of this transformation is the freedom for governments to apply the terrorist label to groups and individuals on the basis of very broad definitions of what terrorismђ entails leading to a glut of terrorist designations.Ŕ
International, regional and national lists of thousands of designated terroristӔ entities now span the globe. The war on terror, the report says, has presented a formidable challenge to those seeking the peaceful resolution of conflicts caused by legitimate and long-festering grievancesӔ. In short, how can professional mediators and peacebuilding organisationsӔ continue to work if they dont know whether their activities are lawful?
The report contains the kind of academic jargon that makes me roar with anger - ғconceptual tools, ԓnon-state armed actors and ԓglobal counter-terrorism listing instruments abound - and itԒs rather mild to the Western governments who threaten all those who talk to terroristsӔ with legal action at home while doing deals with the same rogues behind everyone elses back. The Israelis organise Hezbollah-Israeli prisoner releases, for example, via the German secret service. Timeline: The emergence of Isis
The paper looks at terrorist ғlisting Best Car Accident Lawyer in Orlando Somalia, the Palestinian occupied territories and Turkish Kurdistan, but its analysis of Hamas ԓlisting - and reference to the Taliban - tells the whole story. The EUԒs exclusion of Hamas from diplomatic relations - the EU obediently following the Israeli-US lead - resulted in Europes marginalisation in Palestinian talks. An American NGO withdrew from training and mediation work with the Taliban in Afghanistan when US diplomats could not give them assurances that their work was lawful. Jimmy CarterҒs US-based Carter CentreӔ ended conflict-resolution talks with HamasӔ leaders. An EU mental health project in Gaza collapsed because of a prohibition of dialogue with relevant [Hamas] officialsӔ.
The UK-German report contains a truly surreal remark from a Palestinian NGO which deserves a finale all of its own. I believe that we need to talk to Hamas to educate them and we need to let them know whatӒs going on, he said. ԓBut we cannot make a workshop, we cannot offer a Nescaf or cappuccino for any one of them. Its considered as materialistic support 钅 can you imagine it? You cannot offer them a coffee!
IԒm yet to reward the kindness of a strangerOn 2 February, I recalled in The Independent the kindness of a Heathrow dispatcher called Doug Tibble who returned my contacts book after I left it on a (then) BEA aircraft in 1972. I lost his note, failed to reward him for his kindness and asked if anyone knew where he was today. Now Penny Proudlock has written to say that she worked for BEA and knew Doug. It was entirely in character that he returned your precious contact book,Ӕ she says. He was quite a big man, but very gentle, and quietly spoken.Ӕ
Then she went on: He and his family suffered the most dreadful tragedy: his son served as a police officer in London and he was murdered in a showdown with some criminals Ӆ Doug bore this loss with huge dignity.
In fact, Constable Stephen Tibble was murdered by a Provisional IRA member called Liam Quinn in Kensington 40 years ago. Stephen was newly married, 21 years old and had been Best Car Accident Lawyer in Orlando the police just six months. Off-duty and unarmed, he chased Quinn on his private motorcycle after the IRA man had escaped some colleagues, tried to stop him and was shot twice in the chest. After years on the run, Quinn was sentenced to life, served 11 years and came out in 1999 via the Good Friday Agreement.
Alas, I still donԒt know if Doug Tibble, who would be Best Car Accident Lawyer in Orlando his eighties, is still alive.
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