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Talking to Terrorists: How to End Armed Conflicts Hardcover – 2 Oct 2014

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Jonathan Powell (Author)
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Jonathan Powell (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 10 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Bodley Head (2 Oct. 2014)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1847922295
  • ISBN-13: 978-1847922298
  • Product Dimensions: 16.3 x 3.8 x 24.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 415,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"Essential reading for all parties in conflict" (Patrick Cockburn Independent)

"Fascinating" (Michael Ignatieff Sunday Times)

"This is an inspiring book. You’ll enter the New Year shaking hands with all." (Kirsty Brimelow The Times)

"This is an unusual, indeed a unique, book" (Oliver Miles Guardian)

"The book is an enthralling case study of the art, in which Powell carefully establishes his argument for why dialogue with terror groups is usually necessary" (Anthony Loyd New Statesman)

Book Description

An inside look at the subterranean exchanges that occur between governments and terrorist organisations.

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4.0 out of 5 starsRealistic talk about talking
By david kettler on 5 Nov. 2014
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Jonathan Powell has written an important book on a sample of cases where the most bitter kinds of conflicts have been brought to the stage of negotiations. Contrary to the false impression created by the other reader reviews posted as I write this (the first two), Powell has no illusions that every conflict can be resolved in this way or that nothing is needed except for the side subject to illegitimate violent assaults to announce that they ready for a negotiated settlement. The value of the work is in considerable measure its realism about the effort and patience required to bring about a starting point for negotiations. Powell makes it clear that not all "talking with terrorists" can possibly take the form of negotiations. Much of that talking is devoted to finding and bringing about possible connecting links where actual negotiations on premises acceptable to both sides can be undertaken. Terrorists are not idealized, nor are settlements treated as magic solutions. But the great value of the book is precisely its contributions to nuanced readings of these confrontations and their varied susceptibility to interventions. I recommend it to students.
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5.0 out of 5 starsTalking to Terrorists
By Mr. E. Goody on 1 Oct. 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Jeremy Corbyn is getting flack for talking to the IRA and the Palestine people when there are troubles on. This book explains why conflict is only ever settled by discussion, with the other side. Unless, you talk to them how else can you resolve the differences? What is a shame it has to go to using bully boy tactics before most will listen. A really good read that all politicians should read rather than go to war.
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4.0 out of 5 starsTalks the talk as well as walking the walk
By F Henwood TOP 1000 REVIEWER on 7 Feb. 2016
Format: Paperback
Powell has talked to terrorists himself. He spent years talking to the IRA, on behalf of the British government. The book does not go much into the nitty gritty of negotiations – that would make for a tedious book. Instead, it summarises the key conditions that for negotiations to get going in the first place, and what has to happen to make them succeed. Examples are taken from Northern Ireland; Spain’s struggle with Basque terrorists; the conflict between rebels and the government in Aceh, Indonesia; the ending of apartheid in South Africa; Sri Lanka, Mozambique and the Palestine/Israel peace process in the 1990s. Remarkably, the author himself has never been trained in negotiation. He has learned on the job. Negotiation is an art, not a science.

He shows that governments have often said that they will not talk to terrorists but end up doing so anyway. This happens because governments and their terrorist opponents have exhausted each other in a futile violent struggle and the people for whom the terrorists say they are fighting want a peaceful resolution. This is not soft-headed pacifism. When the British government talked to the IRA, they maintained military and police pressure against the Republicans and were never going to agree to their demands to withdraw from Northern Ireland, against the wishes of the majority community. But this did not mean that there was no reason to talk with them or that it was impossible to meet them halfway. Fighting does not have to end before talks can begin.

Talks with terrorists are not separate from ordinary politics – they are politics, with all the necessary evasions, half-truths and messy compromises that will entail.Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsTalking as an educational tool for diplomats, politicians, and killers
By mangilli-climpson m on 20 Aug. 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
The day after London won the nomination for the Olympics in 2012 was an infamous, tragic day. For myself, a few seconds missing a connection after 8 am at Edgware Road underground station, or my cousin not taking his usual bus at Tavistock Square, was the difference between us still being here and dying. That was the day on 7/7/05 when for the first time a minority of British Muslim killers brought fear and horror onto the streets of London since the Canary Wharf bombing in 1996, part of the thirty year Troubles, with the Provos.

Jonathan Powell, former diplomat, and Chief of Staff to Premier Tony Blair, was fully engaged at the time since Labour's victory in 1997 in bringing peace to Ulster, has produced a third book, the second on terrorism, entitled Talking to Terrorists: How to end armed conflicts. Unlike his first, exclusively on his own contribution to Northern Ireland, this volume is a comparative researched manual and guide to negotiations since the late 1980s.

His material comes from twelve hot spots: two in Europe: Ulster (IRA/UDA/UVF), and the Basque lands (ETA), four in Asia: Indonesia, Aceh (GAM), Nepal UCPN(M), Palestine (PLO), and Sri Lanka (LTTE); three in Africa: Angola (MPLA/UNITA), Mozambique (FRELIMO/RENAMO), and South Africa (ANC); and three more from Latin America: Colombia (FARC), El Salvador (FMLN), and Peru.

Each chapter is a step by step approach: making contacts, building a channel, how governments engage; the need for third parties, the art of negotiating - why a few succeed and many don't.Read more ›
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