The Foreign Service Journal, April 2022

12 APRIL 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL House from 1844 to 1848, Orr was a slave-owning supporter of states’ rights who opposed John C. Calhoun’s “Nullifier” pre-secessionist efforts. Elected to the U.S. House of Repre- sentatives for five terms starting at age 28, Orr was the 22nd Speaker of the House (1857-1859) by age 37. Following President Abraham Lincoln’s November 1860 election, Orr attended South Carolina’s December con- vention that voted unanimously to leave the Union. After outgoing President James Buchanan refused to turn over control of federal forts along South Carolina’s coast to the state, Orr was one of three commis- sioners sent to Washington after Lincoln’s inauguration to negotiate a handover of the forts to avert armed conflict. Lincoln refused and instead attempted to resupply Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, triggering the bombardment of Fort Sumter that began the Civil War. Orr immediately organized the South Carolina First Regiment, known as Orr’s Rifles, assigned to Stonewall Jackson’s Second Corps as part of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Orr returned to politics full time in 1862, serving in the Confederate Senate from 1862 to 1865, including as chair of the Confederate Foreign Relations Committee. “Orr’s Rifles” were present at Appomattox for Lee’s April 1865 sur- render to Ulysses S. Grant. After the war, Orr switched tack, seeking to secure South Carolina’s full restoration of rights within the Union. He served as South Carolina governor, including as the state’s first elected executive, from 1865 to 1868, as Recon- struction began. Reform and reconciliation drove Orr’s postwar positioning, which some political rivals derided as opportun- ism. He advocated limited voting rights for Black people (a majority of South Carolina residents between the Revolu- tionary and Civil Wars), but not passage of the 14th Amendment. Orr joined the Republican Party in 1870 and endorsed President Grant’s anti–Ku Klux Klan initiatives at the 1872 Republican convention. In a recipro- cal gesture of North-South reconcilia- tion, Grant, in turn, nominated Orr as minister to Russia, a diplomatic posting cut prematurely short by his 1873 death along the banks of the Neva. Orr made the news on Juneteenth 2020 when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ordered the removal of official por- traits of four former Speakers who had actively participated in the Confederate military and political efforts to secede. George Kent Senior Foreign Service officer Washington, D.C. Rethink the Approach to Separatist Groups The Dec. 6, 2021, centennial of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, in which the British agreed to withdraw from all but the six northern provinces of Ireland, reminded me that a discussion of how best to deal with nationalist and resistance move- ments typically dismissed as unrepentant terrorist organizations is long overdue. It is time to make an objective appraisal of our past dealings (or lack thereof) with subnational insurgencies with territorial aspirations such as the Irish Republic Army, the African National Congress, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hezbollah, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the Basque Homeland and Liberty (ETA) group and the Oromo Liberation Front. Merely designating them as terrorist groups and refusing to acknowledge their grievances has accomplished little. Our designations certainly didn’t stop them from using terror as a weapon. Neither was it helpful nor accurate to lump these subnational separatist groups in with radical leftist and extremist sectarian entities like the Red Brigades, Red Army Faction, Shining Path, Hamas, the Lord’s Resistance Army and Islamic Jihad. This goes beyond the notion that one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. The Stern Gang’s Yitzhak Shamir and Irgun’s Menachem Begin are prime examples of how avowed terrorists can be later politically rehabilitated and hailed as leaders. (Shamir even gave himself the nick- name “Michael” because of his admi- ration for IRA leader Michael Collins, who—after directing numerous “The Squad” assassinations of British officials and their Irish informers—signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty.) Pegging Gerry Adams as a terrorist until 2006 and Nelson Mandela as one until 2008, moreover, made us look out of touch with historic developments well underway in Northern Ireland and South Africa. During my 1996-1998 assignment to Ethiopia, Oromo representatives told me repeatedly that although the OLF sought independence for Oromia, it would be amenable to greater power-sharing with the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolution- ary Democratic Front in Addis Ababa, led at the time by former Tigray People’s Liberation Front fighters. The Oromo representatives rejected OLF’s designation as a terrorist orga- nization, contending that its leaders would negotiate if given the chance. Not surprisingly, they pointed out parallels with the PLO. Once Yasser Arafat and the PLO were accorded official recognition and oppor- tunities to parlay with Israeli authorities,