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Monday, Sep 11, 2006
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Is talking to Al-Qaeda an option?

Hasan Suroor

A BBC programme poses the question as the "war on terror" enters its sixth year.

"Is it time to talk to Al-Qaeda?" It is a question that once dared not speak its name and, even now, it provokes great passions with those asking the question likely to risk accusations of insensitivity and appeasement. But with the "war on terror," which enters its sixth year this week, going nowhere (according to Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, the West is actually "losing the war"), security experts have begun to question the wisdom of relying solely on the military option to tackle Osama bin Laden and his mob.

The question they are asking is: does it make sense to persist with a strategy that has so palpably failed to deliver and is, in fact, proving counter-productive? Or is it time to pause and talk to Al-Qaeda? Engage the terrorists?

Last week, the BBC telecast a documentary, al-Qaeda: Time to Talk?, aimed at starting a debate on whether the time has come for a change in the West's approach to fighting terrorism. Its conclusion: the "option" to talk to Al-Qaeda, while continuing to crack down on its activities, is worth pursuing.

"Engagement is not endorsement," a former senior American security official tells Peter Taylor, the BBC journalist who made the documentary based on his investigation of Al-Qaeda and the West's response to its activities since the "war on terror" began five years ago.

The question, the documentary poses is: "Do we carry on as we are" even though "we are not winning the war"? Or look at other — non-military — options?

But it remains such an "unsayable" thing, especially in America, that since the programme was telecast Mr. Taylor has been at pains to draw a distinction between advocating a dialogue with Osama bin Laden and simply "floating an idea." He says there is no question of a direct or open contact with Al-Qaeda. What, he is suggesting, is using "back channels" to find out what exactly Osama bin Laden wants.

Answering questions from BBC viewers on its website and in a discussion on its Today programme, he said: "I didn't argue that it makes sense to talk to al-Qaeda but that it was an option we should consider ... Looking at the historical precedence for governments talking to terrorists, the conclusion I reached is that although talking via back channels to al-Qaeda is not really on the agenda at the moment, what it is worth doing is looking at what al-Qaeda actually wants and considering the sort of political implications of the messages."

The British Government, he recalled, did talk to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) after insisting that negotiating with "terrorists" was "inconceivable." What later evolved into an open dialogue started with back channel explorations.

"If you look at the history of the Irish peace process, where MI6 and MI5 had back channels via intermediaries to the so-called terrorists at the time, it is not inconceivable that at some stage, and that stage is not now, that there may be similar contacts via intermediaries to the leadership of al-Qaeda," Mr. Taylor said on the Today programme.

To those who say that Al-Qaeda's demands are simply unacceptable and ask, "but what is there to talk about?" Mr. Taylor says that successive British governments asked similar questions in the 1970s and 1980s about the IRA. "I remember ministers saying to me: talking to IRA is impossible. They want a united Ireland and that is not acceptable," he said.

Mr. Taylor said he had read most of what Osama bin Laden had been saying in the past five years and there were elements in it that offered a "window of opportunity." Basically, his demand came down to American foreign policy and Britain's support for it.

"Bin Laden wants three things: an end to U.S. support for Israel; the removal of foreign (ie U.S.) troops from the Middle East; and a severance of U.S. support for the authoritarian regimes in the region. In the end, he also wants a Caliphate, but this is rarely mentioned in his utterances.

"Interestingly in his letter to the American people, posted on the Internet in October 2002, he also invited America to `deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interest and benefits.' This is exactly the kind of window of opportunity that governments, were they so minded, would explore," Mr. Taylor says.

The alternative, of course, is to carry on with a "war" that does not look like going anywhere: Osama bin Laden is still around, even if cowering in a cave, and his terror network, far from being put "out of business" — as Americans threatened to do — looks even more menacing. It has grown into a "brand" name in the terror business and an "inspiration" for potential terrorists, as a report on the London bombings of July 7, 2005, put it.

So, is it time to try something different? Talk, for instance?

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