The game is changing. The “new terrorists” are intelligent, well prepared,
tactically savvy, heavily armed, willing to die, and they have read the
manuals. And, if you think like a cop, they will know your next move.When confronted with hostage barricade scenarios at the hands of the “new terrorists,” many of the fundamental principles of crisis negotiation still apply, but many of the old rules—and the obsolete assumptions on which they are based—no longer hold.
The best way to approach a fluid, challenging crisis situation involving a capable adversary is not by the rigid application of the traditional checklist. Instead, we offer a few additional guidelines:
- Always keep in mind that negotiation is not just about reaching “deals” and making quid pro quo exchanges; it is also about exercising influence over the thinking, behavior, and decision making of others. Any information gained in conversation—and the very act of having the conversation itself—may present such opportunities at any time.
- Be (and remain) self-diagnostic: understand your own biases and constantly question your assumptions about the hostage takers, their motives, and their willingness to negotiate (keeping in mind that there is a big difference between self-diagnosis and self-doubt). Do not cling to conclusions out of frustration or disgust, or you will miss important clues and opportunities.
- Do not negotiate with the “terrorist,” negotiate with the rational human being who, for some set of reasons, has chosen—or felt forced into—an extreme, violent course of action.
- Use an active listening approach to the negotiations, not just a bargaining approach; focus at least as much on asking good questions, learning, and understanding grievances and motives as on making quid pro quo substantive deals.
- Ask for as many details as possible about the reasons/justification the perpetrators use to explain their actions. The answers will provide criteria that may be useful in other ways later.
- Look for empathetic ways to acknowledge or validate legitimate grievances behind the terrorists’ actions while differing with the actions themselves. This will make it harder for them to label you as unreasonable, it will create chances to de-escalate the situation emotionally, and it may help you to create a wedge between their grievances and their actions, which in turn may help them to question the connection.
- Brainstorm with them. Rather than simply trying to stall with the “good cop, bad cop routine,” genuinely look for ways to address the more legitimate grievances in ways that do not require unwise, unreasonable, or impossible concessions.
- Make sure someone is looking at the bigger picture, beyond this incident.
In the bigger picture, we must be much more aware that, with our responses to (and within) each incident, we are contributing to longer-term trends and we are teaching the terrorists lessons that will be applied to their future operations. What adaptations are we incentivizing, and what lessons are we teaching them? With each incident, are we contributing to an increase in future lethality, higher numbers of hostages and hostage takers, and less willingness to negotiate? Or are we contributing to more moderation, more communication, and problem solving? At the end of the day, we do not want to be engaged in a contest of wills with people who have a lot less to lose than we do, if we can help to change the game.
For this shift to take place, we must remember that even the most “extreme” terrorists are not irrational. We have dealt with members of some of the world’s best-known “terrorist” groups—from al Qaida and the Taliban, to HAMAS and Islamic Jihad, to the Tamil Tigers and the Provisional IRA. Not once have we met a terrorist we would consider irrational. Without exception, they have been intelligent, highly rational, and often quite articulate. They have simply been willing to engage in actions that most of us find abhorrent—for reasons that they find acceptable, based on the conditions they and their constituents face.
While many of us find this notion unappealing and hard to accept, it is actually good news. If the terrorists truly were irrational, we would have little or no chance of influencing them. But because they are, generally, quite rational, there is a chance that we may influence them ... and change the way they are trying to influence us. When is it a good time to negotiate with terrorists? The answer is: Always ... and never.
- Always negotiate with terrorists—as long as you know negotiation is about in- fluence (how is not negotiating with them going to help?)
- Never negotiate with “terrorists”—negotiate with the human beings who, for some reason, have chosen to resort to the tactic of terrorism.
Dolnik, Adam, Fitzgerald, Keith M. Negotiating Hostage Crises with the New Terrorists. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008. pp. 162-163.
