By Alastair Crooke
The Guardian, June 1, 2008
"Sir Hugh Orde speaks rarely heard truth when he says that he has never heard of a terrorist campaign that was “policed out”, adding that he could not think of one that had not ended through negotiation......
In respect to Islamism we are still far from reaching Sir Hugh’s insight that political problems require political solutions. It is not so much a question of whether or not to start with al-Qaida. Why start with al-Qaida, of all groups, when the west will not speak to Hizbullah or Hamas? The western response has been to bomb, assassinate or to starve Islamists in what President Carter rightly has described as a heinous crime. Not only has this shown the west to be morally crippled, it is irreparably flawed: Irish Republicans believed in the justice of their cause - as do the Islamists. The greater the injustice rained upon them, the greater their conviction that it was the very justice of their case that had provoked such a violent response. They emerge stronger-willed."
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