NEGOTIATING (OR NOT) WITH TERRORISTS: HAMAS AND THE TALIBAN

It has long been a stated position, at least rhetorically, of our government that we will not negotiate with terrorists, a position sometimes quietly ignored if events and circumstances demand otherwise.

The latest pronouncement of this "policy" came in President Obama's speech on the Middle East when he stated clearly that Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, could not be a part of any negotiations for settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. (designated by State Department), and the European Union. The need for Obama to make this point came when the Palestinian Authority (PA) (Fatah is the largest faction of the PA coalition) recently made a reconciliation agreement with Hamas, a reconciliation brokered by the post-Mubarak Egyptian government. The PA controls, to the extent allowed by Israel, the occupied West Bank while Hamas dominates in the Gaza strip. Both areas, in whole or in part, are intended to be included in a future independent Palestine. The PA and Hamas had been at odds for four years after Hamas won the parliamentary elections in 2006 and soon militarily threw the PA out of Gaza.

So far, so good. But now we come upon the problem of Afghanistan and efforts to negotiate a political settlement which is likely to include the Taliban. There was another report last week that talks with the Taliban had been ginned together by Germany and Qatar, talks which include the United States. Turkey earlier had also offered to facilitate talks with the Taliban. We have been fighting a war against the Taliban for 10 years and have put a reward of $10 million on Mullah Muhammad Omar, the spiritual head of the Afghan Taliban. It was the Taliban who, in their five years of control of Afghanistan under radical Islamic law, hosted Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda until both were ousted by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following al-Qaeda's destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001.

While al-Qaeda and several of its franchised organizations in other countries have been designated terrorist groups by the U.S., the Afghan Taliban have not. One Pakistan-based Taliban group has been so designated but not the Afghan Taliban. So, despite a 10-year war with the Afghan Taliban and the various factions that have re-located to Pakistan and a bounty on Omar's head, it is not a designated terrorist group and thus can be a negotiating partner in any Afghan peace settlement.

But the puzzlement is the designation or non-designation of organizations as terrorist groups and the implications for political settlement of very thorny problems such as Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. We won't talk with Hamas with whom the Israelis, but not the U.S., has had a continuing problem of terrorist activities and Hamas has clearly stated that it seeks the destruction of Israel. But we will talk with the Afghan Taliban which is determined to return to power there and has committed many attacks on the Afghan government and civilians, attacks which could be called terrorist.

There is, of course, the legally nuanced distinction between a designated terrorist organization, or not, as a rationale for permitting or not permitting direct negotiation. Also, we are committed to the security of Israel and are thus supportive of its stand prohibiting negotiations with Hamas. But it would be difficult to escape the conclusion that our own domestic politics has a role to play in choosing negotiating partners. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives fell just 12 votes short of including in a defense bill an amendment to speed our exit from Afghanistan, including pursuit of a political settlement to achieve an early departure. Presumably that political settlement implied negotiating with the Taliban. But it is highly doubtful that Congress, where Israel enjoys considerable political support, would urge any political settlement of the Palestinian problem if it meant negotiation with Hamas.

Such is the fine tuning between official evil doers such as Hamas and just plain evil doers such as the Taliban who kill American soldiers and cost billions for an increasingly unpopular war. This is not to argue that there is no clear distinction to be made between the designated and non-designated terrorist organizations, but only to say that in the world of foreign problem solving, we sometimes find ourselves in a dilemma in seeking to link political pragmatism with asymmetrical policies.