Preventing Political Violence Against Civilians

Nationalist Militant Conflict in Northern Ireland, Israel And Palestine

Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137433800
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The increased targeting of civilians by militants raises serious and profound questions for policy-makers. Examining conflict in Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, this book focuses on ethno-nationalist militant groups and formulates a model to constrain violence against civilians.

1

Introduction

There is a depressing familiarity to news reports of terrorist attacks showing scenes of devastation and death, and screaming, grieving victims. But these awful images tend to be decontextualised from the politics and history of the conflict, and instead focus on the individual attacks in isolation: where it happened, the number of dead and injured, who claimed responsibility and so forth. For most Western viewers it is just another attack, unless of course there is something particularly newsworthy about it: huge numbers of dead, someone famous or powerful is killed, or it happens in an American or European city. The extreme violence used in such high profile attacks is designed by militants to strike where people feel safe, and to terrorise them. The lack of explanation or predictability further disempowers the victims, frightens them and leaves them with a sense of having no control. This achieves militants’ aims because it makes the people they are attacking feel unsafe and in turn highlights the impotence of the militants’ opponents, who are shown to be unable to protect their own. The militants forcibly insert themselves into the equation. The typical reaction of opponents or the state is that of vengeance and retaliation, to show strength and military might. However, in conflicts more familiar with the consequences of tit-for-tat violence, the families are frequently heard plaintively asking that there be no retaliation. If they are not heeded, the retaliation will appear on television screens in the coming weeks and months. Again the conflict will appear without in-depth context, and the coverage will further compound our lack of understanding. Ultimately, however, without an understanding of the dynamics of political violence it is very difficult to find solutions to constrain that violence. This book argues that it is vital to understand and find solutions, and to utilise the political structures that exist to do this.

So how do situations involving contentious politics get to a point where violence, even that which targets civilians, seems the most viable and effective way of forwarding the political agenda of nationalist militant groups? The book focuses on nationalist militant groups because they carry out more attacks, more frequently than any other group and conflict is becoming more local and national, not more global, despite the widespread misperception to the contrary. The main arguments are that in order to constrain the resort to political violence by militants we need to first examine the political and historical context within which it happens. The book argues that in situations of contentious politics the claim-making by protesters, and subsequent over-reaction and repression by states, narrows the political space available in which to forward non-violent agendas. Thereafter the militants can justify escalating their use of violence in order to advance their agenda. They identify political opportunities and constraints within the political structures in order to do so. If political opportunities for violence are high and constraints are low, if the militants have high mobilising structures and resources, and they can frame the conflict in a way that has salience with their constituency, then it is more likely that political violence against civilians will occur.

Conversely when the political opportunities for violence are low and the constraints high, in conjunction with limited mobilising structures and cultural framing, then it is more likely that such political violence will not escalate. These findings offer policymakers significant insights into how to constrain the violence resorted to by militant groups and also how to induce militant groups to move towards a peaceful settlement, by engaging with the structures involved. The findings also suggest that policymakers should keep political opportunities for violence low and the constraints high, they should attempt to disrupt the mobilising structures of the militants through security measures and diplomacy, and they should engage robustly in framing the conflict to emphasise the devastating impact of civilians being killed. At all times they must avoid exacerbating the situation through the use of overt repression, rhetoric which plays into the hands of the militants and allows them to claim victimhood and grievance, or by adopting policies which actively discriminate against the militant group’s constituency. Political structures, both formal and informal, exist and should be used to resolve and address underlying grievances, rather than military or security approaches alone.

Case selection

In order to select case studies to answer the research question there were a number of specific requirements: the cases needed to be ethno-nationalist conflicts that had militant groups with a comparable life span and ideally had an explicitly political nationalist ideology that could be examined; in choosing the cases, there also needed to be one with low levels of violence against civilians and one with high levels of violence against civilians; there also needed to be variance within the case studies in terms of sub-cases/waves of violence. Having viewed the range of possibilities in detail, including the PKK in the Kurdish/Turkish conflict, the situation of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, ETA in the Basque country and others, the two that best satisfy the criteria and provide for comparison, are Northern Ireland (the Provisional IRA), and Israel and Palestine (Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades).

Northern Ireland: The Provisional IRA engaged in a high profile 30-year conflict. It was the largest of the Northern Irish and Irish republican paramilitary groups. It was responsible for almost half the deaths: 1771 of the 3636 (McKittrick et al., 1999: 1745), making them the main aggressor in the conflict (Alonso, 2007: 5). It was responsible for the Birmingham pub bombings which killed over 20 people, as well as the Enniskillen bombing, the Bloody Friday bombings in Belfast and further bombings in the United Kingdom, which caused huge structural damage in London and Manchester. Its political representatives, Sinn Féin entered into a peace process and there has been a democratic and constitutional settlement, based on the 1998 Belfast/ Good Friday Agreement. The Provisional IRA was selected because it killed more people than any other group in Northern Ireland, but it has since decommissioned its arms and abided by the 1998 Agreement. It also displayed operational capacity and political awareness that was not apparent amongst loyalists. Overall it used low levels of violence against civilians, but it did use violence against civilians. Also, as with Israel and Palestine, there were two waves which provides for variance within the case study. The highest levels were used in Wave One 1971–1976, and Wave Two 1987–1993. Wave Two was, in comparison to Wave One, less violent and happened while the political wing, Sinn Féin, was engaging with the peace process.

Israel and Palestine: This case study is an ongoing conflict, where the use of violence against civilians has been high, especially in the form of suicide missions, which deliberately targeted civilians. The groups examined are Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Hamas was involved in both waves of violence and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades from the beginning of the Second Intifada. The extreme violence carried out by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades during the Second Intifada, indicates a high level of capacity, whereby at times its use of violence surpassed the much more established Hamas. But, significantly, while Hamas is an Islamist nationalist organisation, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is affiliated to the traditionally less Islamist Fatah party. Hamas began using suicide missions against Israeli civilians in the early 1990s. As well as high levels of anti-civilian violence there is also variance in terms of the levels used. In 1993–1997 the first wave of anti-civilian violence (Wave One) was witnessed, and 2000–2005 saw the second wave (Wave Two), which was more violent than the first. Since then all of the peace processes have failed and there have been no formal peace conferences with both sides involved since the 2007 Annapolis Conference. Hopes of a new peace accord have failed to emerge, despite the efforts in recent times of the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, who has brought the parties into talks for the first time in three years.

When choosing case studies for a comparative analysis of national conflicts and peace, the case studies that get chosen frequently on the basis of similarity tend to be Northern Ireland, and Israel and Palestine, as well as the more successful South Africa example (Akenson, 1992; Ben-Porat, 2006; Gagiano and Giliomee, 1990; Guelke, 1988; Hughes and Knox, 1995; Lustick, 1993; Miller, 2007). From a structural perspective there are clear similarities regarding the emergence of nationalism in Northern Ireland, and Israel and Palestine. The British partitioned them both, as the British Empire collapsed slowly in the first half of the twentieth century, and both have shared a similar historical development. Both conflicts were initially about territory, and increasingly about culture and identity. Furthermore, in both cases the changed international context of the 1990s had an influence on their emerging peace processes (Ben-Porat, 2006: 3–5). They both passed through a number of phases, frequently seen in many ethno-nationalist conflicts. Subordinate ethnic groups in modernisation usually pass through a number of phases: a demand for equality for all citizens, recognition of their separateness, such as ‘cultural recognition, institutional political recognition and a demand for secession’ (Coakley, 1993: 7). These were phases identifiable in both Northern Ireland, and Israel and Palestine, with regards to the social movements and militant groups involved.

However, what is clear from a comparison of the case studies in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 is that while they share similarities, there are also some crucial differences. Namely, the violence against civilians, and the dynamics of how the conflict escalated in Israel and Palestine, but was resolved through a peace process in Northern Ireland. The case studies were also used extensively in the early 1990s as a means of identifying solutions, with lessons learnt for solving intractable conflicts, and achieving peace implementation and democratic settlement of conflict (Guelke, 2008; King et al., 2005). Many of those who worked on the Northern Ireland peace process later went on to work on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, such as the former United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, Senator George Mitchell and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Methodology

The methodology of the book includes small N case studies, fieldwork and interviews, the creation of a database of violence against civilians, discourse analysis and the collection of public opinion data. By using small N cases studies it allows for a systematic, structured and focused comparison of the explanatory factors, on a continuum and in their historical and political context. Regarding violence against civilians, databases were created and the episodes/events of violence against civilians were mapped out in both the case studies, and in the sub-cases in each. Furthermore interviews, discourse analysis and public opinion data specifically allowed for the militant group and constituency group perceptions to be examined, and more generally added to the explanatory value of the research. The adoption of a methodology that uses case studies where we can see the political process approach, a database where we can see statistical changes and trends, and discourse analysis and interviews with militants and the constituency group, allows for triangulation and also ensures transparency and accuracy.

The number of civilian deaths caused by militant groups provides the gauge by which episodes of violence against civilians are measured. Two databases are compiled for incidents of anti-civilian violence (ACV) in each of the two case studies, which are Northern Ireland, and Israel and Palestine. Two information datasets already exist for Northern Ireland, which are based on cross-referencing of newspaper reports and they provide the raw informational data of who was killed, how, where and when. These datasets are used in order to access and extrapolate the information needed regarding violence against civilians, and create the Northern Ireland database. The two datasets are the ‘Lost Lives’ book dataset, and the ‘Sutton Index of Deaths’ dataset, which is available online.¹ The most recent additional information and findings by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) are also included in the database, because this information is relevant but has not been updated in the two previous datasets.² In the Palestinian Israeli conflict, there is no similar uncontested published data available. Therefore, in order to ensure comparability, in the case of Israel and Palestine each incident of ACV is identified through Lexis Nexis searches, and cross-referenced with a minimum of one other corresponding newspaper article(s). All of the cases are reported in, or by, reputable and authoritative newspapers and/or media organisations.

Particularly in the case of Israel and Palestine, which is an ongoing conflict taking place in a post 9/11 context, it must be noted that there has, in recent years been a proliferation of terrorism research resources and databases (Jongman, 2011). However, most terrorism databases are not specifically tailored to this current research, in terms of information available. There is also significant variance between databases, regarding the data they have compiled. In order to ensure reliability it was deemed best to create a primary research database that can be verified and is subject to certain standards. The databases for this research contain all reported incidences of violence against civilians from primary sources such as newspapers. But it is also cross-referenced and draws on the work of the Israeli Institute for Counter-Terrorism, the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Global Terrorism Database, the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, the United States State Department Country Reports on Terrorism, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and B’Tselem, which had some complementary information. The Israel and Palestine database does not use cases in other databases unless at least two reputable and authoritative newspapers and/or media organisations can independently verify them.

The database for Northern Ireland (1970–1998), ends when the 1998 peace negotiations were voted for by the people of the island of Ireland, North and South. The database for Israel and Palestine begins in 1989 and ends 2011. This is the timeline of the beginning of the formation of each militant group and their use of political violence in each case study. The compilation of databases allows for a deeper analysis, by setting out as much information as is available in each case study. The classifications were chosen based on the ability to cross-reference with the other case study as far as was possible, and also in accordance with the research imperatives of being able to replicate the research and being consistent over time. The databases allow for the organisation of information regarding each attack such as the time period, the number of dead, the militant groups involved, the type of attack and the targets. Once the empirical data was organised in such a manner, this allowed for identifying causal and constitutive explanations. For example it is possible to identify waves and patterns in the database that relate it to the specific political context.

The actions of the three militant groups being studied, Hamas, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Provisional IRA, are measured through the database of civilian deaths and if/how the civilians were targeted by them. Furthermore the research uses discourse analysis of previous interviews given by the militants regarding political violence, and in-depth interviews were conducted, where possible, with the former members of the militant groups, to further indicate motivations and intent. The research used a combination of official resources, in conjunction with oral life histories, interviews given during fieldwork and written biographical material. By using the official resources (and by triangulating), the research does not leave itself open to the accusation that biographical recollections of events can be of low reliability if used only on their own. But, it is important to use interviews and to examine ‘the participants’ images and perceptions of historical events’ and the ‘militants image of external reality’ (Della Porta, 1995: 19). In the case of the Provisional IRA, the newly available accounts written by Provisional IRA members were extremely useful, although such material can never be viewed in isolation or accepted uncritically as a source.

Research process and fieldwork

A crucial element of the research was the fieldwork and interviews, and fifty in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with specific individuals involved in political violence and the political process. There is no doubt that the subject areas of terrorism and political violence are of course sensitive research topics. Lee’s Doing Research on Sensitive Topics (1993) showed that the sensitive nature of a research topic is dependent on context and cultural norms. But clearly the areas identified as sensitive topics occur in the study of terrorism and political violence: where death happens, illegal behaviour is revealed and there is the presence of a political threat. In addition they all create methodological and technical considerations regarding how to conceptualise terrorism and political violence, access to interviewees and data, mistrust and safety (Lee, 1993). But although the study and primary research fieldwork involved is difficult, it is also of great importance (Dolnik, 2013; Horgan, 2004). In addition there is now an extensive range of literature detailing how to conduct research relating to the sensitive research topics of terrorism and political violence. It includes overviews of fieldwork in the area and how best to do it, considerations and methodological issues, as well as the more practical issues regarding safety and data storage (Alonso, 2007; Berko, 2007; Bloom, 2005; Brannan et al., 2001; Dolnik, 2011, 2013; Horgan, 2009; Juergensmayer, 2000; Nordstrom and Robben, 1996; Post et al., 2003; Silke, 2001). The advice as set out is helpful when designing the research methodology and advance planning for fieldwork. It helped to avoid many of the methodological issues that frequently occur and to ensure the research on sensitive topics was carried out correctly and ethically.

During four months in the West Bank and Israel (January–April 2010), and a shorter research trip in Gaza (2011), primary research was carried out and public opinion data was collected, from the First Intifada to 2011. Interviews were conducted with former members of the militant groups, as well as politicians and elite members of the constituency group (Palestinians) in order to gather information regarding the salience of cultural framing and the justification process. Members of Hamas, former members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and elite members of the constituency group were interviewed. In Northern Ireland interviews were also conducted, both with former members of the militant groups and also with elite members of the constituency group (Northern Irish/Irish nationalists). This was done in order to gather information regarding the salience of cultural framing and the justification process. Given the fact that the Provisional IRA has decommissioned, and also given the fact that many former militants are ex-prisoners and have already served time, they could be more open in interviews than Palestinians who were subject to the constraints of a ‘live’ conflict.

However, the Boston College legal case created unforeseen problems regarding access to interviewees and the conduct of interviews. The case had a very definite negative impact. The British authorities requested that the university hand over confidential interviews with republicans that were conducted by the journalists Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre for Boston College’s oral archive of ‘the Troubles’.³ Twenty republicans who had con...