Men who don’t learn from their mistakes
by Scoop Shachtman, 9 September 2007
Waite, a former Anglican church envoy held captive for nearly five years in Lebanon in the 1980s after being seized during a mission to negotiate hostage releases, made the call in a television debate to be broadcast by BBC World.He said international experience, including apartheid South Africa’s negotiations with the once banned African National Congress and Britain’s with the IRA in Northern Ireland, showed that talking to opponents was the right way forward.
“No insurgency or terrorism has been defeated by warfare or violence. My own experience shows that you can talk to those whose positions seem impossible,” said Waite.
“There are some rational players in al Qaeda but it also attracts the psychotic. We need to seek an entry point.”
I’m interested in which Muslim populations Waite feels he can sacrifice to Al Qaeda’s vision. The Afghans weren’t keen, Iraq aren’t particularly keen either after their experience of having children beheaded.
In any case, is Waite correct? Surely the IRA’s realisation that they could not win led to a political accommodation with the UK government. Al Qaeda still think they are winning, and people like Waite help them to come to that conclusion.
More importantly, Waite says his experience shows you can talk to those whose positions seem impossible. Let us remember that once when Waite tried this tactic of talking to people with impossible positions, specifically Islamic Jihad in Beirut in 1987, he spent 1,763 days in captivity - four years of which were in total solitary confinement.
I think there is a lesson for us all there.
