Negotiating with Terrorists?

Or at least insurgents. That's what The Economist is reporting as a potential, but it comes obviously with a lot of baggage:

At least four groups—the Iraqi Islamic Army, the 1920 Revolution Group, the Mujahideen Army and the al-Jamaa Brigades—may be preparing delegations to meet Mr Talabani. Despite their Islamist names, they probably represent members of Mr Hussein’s army, intelligence service and formerly ruling Baath party. The Americans have long hoped to split such “nationalist” guerrillas from the jihadists who follow such leaders as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the proclaimed leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who is thought to hate Iraq’s Shia majority as apostates and wants to turn Iraq into a puritan Sunni state. By contrast, many Iraqis say that the nationalist insurgents above all want an amnesty, an investigation into recent human-rights abuses, the political rehabilitation of former Baathists and the rebuilding of the old Iraqi army: a guarantee, in other words, that Iraq’s former ruling minority will have a secure place in a new and multi-sectarian Iraq.

A lot of Kurds, who have been comparatively safe in their self-ruling northern zone, are probably ready to discuss such demands. So are many in the American administration. But they are unlikely to get the Islamist Shia parties who now dominate Iraq’s government to agree—especially the Iran-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), whose bitter hatred of Iraq’s old Sunni-led army and ruling party goes back to the eight-year war with Iran which started in 1980 and left perhaps 1m Iraqi and Iranian dead. SCIRI officials sometimes say that the Baathists see negotiations as a tactical ploy to get the Americans out—after which they will try to recover their old place as Iraq’s top dogs.

The Shias are particularly twitchy about the prospect of direct talks between the Americans and the insurgents. Some Shias, mindful of Britain’s supposed colonial preference for Sunni Arab rulers, suspect that the West is always willing to cut a deal at their expense. Shia leaders also resent the idea that representatives of the superpower might talk directly to Baathist leaders, while overriding the wishes of Iraq’s new establishment, which the insurgents denounce as American puppets.

Shia leaders are also infuriated by the Americans’ apparent concern to embrace more Iraqi Sunnis and by the growing number of reports in the American press about human-rights abuses committed by their co-religionists in such places as the interior ministry. SCIRI’s leader, Abdelaziz al-Hakim, has lashed out at the Americans for reining in the Iraqi security forces during a recent counter-insurgency offensive, saying that American “mistakes” have “cost us dearly”. Indeed, most Shia leaders are reluctant, at present, to contemplate negotiating with the insurgents, for the simple reason that, as a national majority of around 60% to the Sunnis’ 20% or so, they think they can win; the rougher the methods, the better.

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If real progress is to be made, interlocutors for the insurgents must prove that they can stop violence in specific areas for a set length of time—for instance, by promising not to set off roadside bombs, the insurgents’ main weapon, in a certain district for, say, a week. So far, there is no evidence that individual groups have the clout to switch off the insurgency, even in limited areas. That is what the more flexible members of the government may, experimentally, be hoping for. But it is not clear how much influence, after December 15th, they will have.