Policy briefing

Choosing to engage: armed groups and peace processes

2005

Conciliation Resources' Accord programme contributes to bridging this knowledge gap with a new publication, Choosing to engage: armed groups and peace processes. The publication is authored by representatives from states, armed groups and intermediaries and is available from Conciliation Resources (CR). CR is an international organization with ten years experience in applied international conflict transformation work (www.c-r.org/accord).

This policy paper offers a digest of the key lessons and insights emerging from the engagement of armed groups in peace processes. The project has focused on armed groups operating primarily within state borders who use violence to challenge or reform the structures of political and economic power. Criminal organizations and international terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda are outside the primary focus of this paper. The term 'engagement' refers to initiatives by either the warring parties or intermediaries to explore, enable or sustain opportunities for contact with or between the parties.

It is vital to achieve greater commitment from all stakeholders to dialogue with armed groups in order to end violent conflict and strengthen democracy.

Engagement tends to strengthen the pro-dialogue elements within armed groups, while lack of engagement tends to strengthen hardliners. Minimal levels of engagement ought to be the norm, not a concession.

Engagement can take many forms, from simple contact to substantive negotiations, involving a myriad of possible third parties. Practitioners and policy-makers should focus on identifying appropriate tactics and effective strategies.

Proscription of armed groups (e.g. terrorist listing) is a blunt instrument and can be counterproductive. There is an urgent need to review such laws and to develop more sophisticated mechanisms to allow appropriate engagement and encourage peacemaking.

Improved interaction and cooperation between governmental and unofficial intermediaries would benefit all parties pursuing effective engagement strategies.

Lessons Learned

The case for engagement

If we are committed to ending violent conflicts, preventing 'failed states', protecting civilians and promoting democracy, we must explore how best to engage with non-state armed groups. They are key protagonists in internal conflicts and therefore critical to ending violence. Experience suggests that there is rarely a purely military solution in these situations, particularly when the goal is to create a durable peace. Non-state armed groups are often an expression of real and perceived political, social or economic exclusion, or the result of poorly addressed historical grievances. Furthermore, military responses often fuel antagonism and further violence, which results in civilian casualties and entrenches the 'language of violence'. A lack of engagement can strengthen hardliners who believe that force is the only effective strategy. This is particularly evident in long-running conflicts such as in the Middle East, Chechnya, Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Strategic and principled engagement with armed groups can build the necessary confidence among belligerents for a sustainable resolution of the conflict. Engagement can lead to improved understanding of the root causes of conflict, identify obstacles to settlement and pinpoint possible ways forward. Moreover, the case for engagement is strengthened by the responsibility to protect the local populations who are affected by conflict and its consequences.

Who, how and when

Although the case for engagement with armed groups will always be context-specific and dynamic, the question is more usefully framed as who should engage and how, rather than whether to engage or not. The wide variety of possible engagement options means that engagement of some form, even if it is simple contact, is usually warranted. The challenge is to identify who is best placed to intervene and using what strategy. The different stakeholders in armed conflicts (including local communities, national governments, international organizations and foreign governments) will all have different thresholds at which engagement becomes appropriate or effective. They will also have different modalities of engagement at their disposal. Even during particularly 'hot' phases in a conflict informal intermediaries can maintain discreet contacts with elements of armed groups who are open to and serious about dialogue.

Legitimacy

While it is a fallacy that engagement with an armed group is tantamount to appeasement or to complicity in violence, there is a valid concern that engagement may confer legitimacy on an armed group's struggle or tactics. However, the range of available options means that support for low-key engagement strategies led by local community groups or NGOs may keep the option of dialogue alive without appearing to legitimize a group. In Northern Ireland discreet contact laid the basis for future negotiations.

Human rights

Condemning human rights abuses, taking action against perpetrators and exploring effective ways of ending the conflict are all essential responses to organized violence, and pursuit of one goal must not happen at the expense of another. The challenge for interveners is to manage the tensions between the twin pursuits of peace and justice through careful and strategic consideration of timing and roles. Equally, it is imperative that the views of affected communities are considered when determining responses to human rights abuses.

Improved analysis

In order to engage with armed groups it is crucial to understand them, yet current policy responses are often based on poor analysis and understanding. Intelligence information alone will not give an adequate picture. A holistic understanding of the group is required including their political/economic agendas, constituency support, relationship with criminal networks, views about violence, internal dynamics, experience of the conflict and past peace initiatives and crucially their adversaries' characteristics. It is also important to understand how all these characteristics change over time, why they change and how outsiders and evolving circumstances can influence this process.

The process is important

The process of acquiring an understanding of an armed group will affect the quality of the information obtained, as the analyst will always bring their own perspective to the process. The nature, depth and quality of the interaction with an armed group, both direct and indirect, will be an important variable.

Labels matter

The homogenizing nature of much of the discourse and language of the 'war on terror' oversimplifies the complex realities of violent conflicts. It is based on defective analysis which depoliticizes armed conflicts and demonizes all armed groups as fundamentalists or extremists. Whilst it may have a tactical purpose, describing all armed groups as terrorists can close down opportunities for pacific engagement. This has proved a stumbling block when attempting to dialogue with groups such as the Maoists in Nepal and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. A distinction between different types of groups and between tactics and objectives must be made.

Strategic considerations

Armed groups will make strategic choices about whether to pursue political dialogue or military tactics to advance their objectives. This will be determined by their analysis of the respective rewards or weaknesses of either strategy, and by how the balance of arguments at any one time favours the analysis of one or other group within the movement.

Third party roles

Those who are working to end violent conflict need to consider how their actions affect a group's assessment of the potential of pacific engagement. Given the particular sensitivities of working with armed groups, trusted intermediaries may need to work exclusively with this constituency to help them understand and review their engagement options, enable them to engage more effectively in political negotiations and act as a 'translator' of meanings between protagonists. This work can complement the efforts of other third parties who may be well placed to convene dialogue between belligerents.

Military weakness

Military weakness is no guarantee of an increase in commitment to negotiations; in fact it can have the reverse effect, with a more radical approach to violence adopted if a group perceives it would otherwise enter negotiations from a position of weakness. Armed groups are often willing to bide their time and hold out until they can see advantages to be gained from dialogue. Furthermore, even when conflicts end with the defeat of the armed group, such as the Angolan civil war, parties benefited from building on past peace negotiations as they formalized the end of hostilities.

The humanitarian entrée?

Experience shows that dialogue with armed groups on humanitarian issues such as aid supplies in Sudan or mine clearance in Colombia can act as an initial confidence-building measure when political and security issues are too contentious to address. It is important to identify issues with care, as some humanitarian issues will be easier to broach than others, depending on the context. However, humanitarian goals should not be simply instrumentalized for conflict resolution purposes. The politicization of humanitarian issues or the failure to reach agreements on them can result in the conflict continuing with even less respect for these principles.

Diversionary tactics

All parties to the conflict can derive political capital from being seen to uphold humanitarian norms or alleviate suffering, while at the same time postponing serious efforts to resolve the conflict. Third parties concerned primarily with humanitarian issues have to consider the political context and implications of their interventions.

Improving cooperation

The multiplicity of interveners in many armed conflicts requires greater cooperation between state and non-state actors. While recognizing the sensitivities of engagement processes, greater effort is required by all interveners to ensure that concerns about confidentiality do not result in numerous uncoordinated and contradictory efforts to engage with armed groups.

A niche role for non-state actors

The non-state characteristics of armed groups mean that other unarmed non-state actors can be well placed to engage in unofficial diplomacy, benefiting from greater access to information on armed groups and greater freedom of movement. In Sierra Leone local civil society groups contributed significantly to bringing the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) to the negotiating table. This area of work currently receives inadequate political or financial support from governments.

Governments' third party roles

Numerous peace processes testify to the critical role that foreign governments can play in supporting dialogue and negotiation with armed groups. El Salvador is just one example of the positive effects of international engagement, whereby foreign governments facilitated the ascendancy of more moderate groups within the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) which in turn made the FMLN more willing and able to participate in political negotiations. While the incentives and inducements that governments offer are vital to progress in negotiations, they are also blunt instruments that cannot substitute for the genuine commitment of the parties. Moreover, governmental actors need to review areas where incoherence between their policies on foreign affairs, trade, immigration and defence is proving detrimental to peace processes.

A state-centric international system

The state-based international system creates challenges for both states and intermediaries engaging with non-state armed groups, and for armed groups wanting to engage in dialogue with states. These challenges include ideological restrictions surrounding the principle of sovereignty as well as practical problems of communications and freedom of movement. Policy makers need to guard against actions that entrench the asymmetrical dynamics that make armed conflicts particularly difficult to resolve, and find ways to counteract the uneven abilities of different parties to engage.

Review anti-terrorist legislation

Instruments such as sanctions and proscription need to be used in a way that encourages peaceful resolution of conflicts. Anti-terror legislation is proving an obstacle to peace processes in various conflict contexts, such as in Sri Lanka with the LTTE, in Nepal with the Maoists and in Chechnya. It prevents representatives of armed groups from participating in peace negotiations and reinforces armed groups' perceptions that they only have military options. It is essential to develop more nuanced policy instruments, which condemn and discourage violence without damaging prospects for peace talks.

Creative mechanisms

Creative procedural agreements can help overcome some of the issues described above and can address armed groups' concerns about domination at the negotiating table. The targeting or nuancing of sanctions against groups using violence can be used to encourage dialogue. The Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees between the Government of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front (NDF) provides a compelling example of an instrument that has established equal terms for both parties to enter into peace negotiations. Similarly the 'Deed of Commitment' developed by Geneva Call provides an effective mechanism for ensuring armed groups commit to respect international standards as a condition of further engagement.

We need to address the difficult choices and issues that surround engaging with armed groups. The costs of a failing to learn from our collective experiences of engagement are too high.

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