Last week the world found out that the United States is in talks with the Taliban.

My first reaction was a surprise as I thought the US doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. So I started my research. As appears, I was right, well partly. Officially the US doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, but US doesn’t recognise the Taliban as a terrorist organisation.

Before I’ve learned about this I could theoretically think of three types of possible governments’ stances towards the negotiations with terrorists:

1) Governments that don’t negotiate with terrorist.

2) Governments that do negotiate with terrorists.

3) Governments that say they don’t negotiate but in reality they do.

Most countries belong to the third group, while of course claiming there are in the first, hoping that secret negotiations they are conducting with the terrorists won’t be found out about. It appeared that former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was conducting clandestine negotiations with the IRA from 1981 through to the early 1990s while telling her people and the rest of the world “We do not negotiate with terrorists”. It became obvious that the US during Bush administration while officially taking the same position as the UK had actually negotiated with the Iraqi terrorist group “Revenge Brigades” who held hostage American journalist Jill Carroll in 2006. But it’s difficult to find examples for the second group, rather than Russia during the Nord-Ost theatre siege in 2002, when one negotiator after another went in and out of the theatre, including state officials. The official position has changed since.

Of course belonging to the third group means that you lose your credibility as a government in the eyes of your people. So the US came up with the fourth option. They simply decided not to recognise the Taliban as a terrorist group in the wake of negotiations. Less than a year ago the State Department published a report designating terrorist organisations, and even though there was lots of pressure on the government to include Taliban, it was not.

To be named a terrorist organisation in the US it must meet three following criteria: It must be foreign, it must engage in terrorist activity and its activity must threaten the security of the US or its citizens. So, the Taliban is definitely a foreign group, it is definitely involved in the terrorist activities and it did kill plenty of the Americans. What this report didn’t mention is that there was another fourth criterion that is probably sounds something like: if a group is needed at negotiation table, forget first three criteria.

I will not try to answer the question whether we should negotiate with terrorists or not. This is a subject for a doctoral dissertation and I’m sure plenty were written and opposite conclusions made.

From my personal experience of being born and raised in the North Caucasus I’ve been witnessing terrorist attacks from a very early age, one worse than another. There was a market explosion in Mineralnye Vody (in the city I lived in) in 2001. My mum left the market few minutes before the explosion. There were several suicide bomb attacks on so called ‘student trains’ starting from 2003 that many of my classmates were taking to get to universities. And of course an incomprehensibly brutal seizure and killing of school children in Beslan in 2004. And this is only the beginning of a long list.

Unconsciously I ask myself, would I negotiate with those who can commit such atrocities? And the answer is “Absolutely not!” But the governments face a much more difficult decision. If they don’t seize the opportunity to negotiate, the things might go terribly wrong and the responsibility would lay on a government in question.

However, the governments by not admitting that they do negotiate with terrorists create a much bigger problem of not being able to develop a good practice of such negotiations. Why not just admit we do negotiate with terrorists? The common answer to this question is that negotiating with terrorists would strengthen them, legitimize their actions, etc. Ok, that does make sense and I agree with it. But doesn’t it make matters worse when the governments conduct secret negotiations (secret for us, public, but not so secret for the terrorist organisations themselves!)? Doesn’t this legitimise these organisations and what they do? Of course it does! So if we are realistic there are only two choices: either say you don’t negotiate with terrorists, and then really don’t. Or say that you do and face lots of criticism, but develop good practice of such negotiations and become more credible in the eyes of your people.

­The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.