Proscribing Peace

This book examines how placing armed groups on terrorist lists shapes the course of peace talks. Drawing on unusually close access to those involved in the Colombian negotiations with the FARC-EP, Sophie Haspeslagh shows that such listings make talks harder to reach and stretch them out over longer periods.

Central to the argument is the idea of a 'linguistic ceasefire,' a concept Haspeslagh introduces to explain how timing and sequencing in peace processes are affected when a group is proscribed. The approach rests on three steps: acknowledging that a conflict exists, setting aside the 'terrorist' label, and treating the violent act as separate from the actor who commits it. Taken together, these steps strip proscription of much of its symbolic weight, even in cases where a group cannot be delisted before negotiations begin.

Haspeslagh contends that this matters far beyond Colombia. The concept applies to more than half of the world's conflicts in which an armed group appears on a terrorist list, and it offers a way to understand why some of these conflicts remain locked in a terrorist framing while others move beyond it.

International proscription regimes currently treat both the armed actor and the act of terrorism as criminal at once. The book calls for ending that fusion and argues that focusing on acts instead would allow international policy to weigh violence committed by armed groups and by states alike. Separating act from actor, the author maintains, is what opens the way to change and, with it, to peace.