Insurgent leaders negotiating with enemies risk being accused of betrayal by their own

Evidence

Aben Humeya maintained intelligence contacts with his Christian enemy, as he was surely bound to do. Short of securing effective overseas aid from Algiers, and behind Algiers from Istanbul (aid that the Granadans were indeed actively soliciting), the Muslims had to place their hopes on some new accommodation with Philip. But a leader who entered into negotiations with the enemy ran the risk of being thought to be plotting a way of saving his own skin by selling out. Too often in the fighting of the fifteenth century the Granadans had seen this happen; it is not surprising that their descendents were suspicious in 1569. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1033

Categorization

• XREF: A universal insurgent-leader dilemma; connects to modern asymmetric-warfare cases where negotiating with the enemy brands a leader a collaborator. — connects to: Outbidders may damage a peace process only as a byproduct of attacking intragroup rivals. — Cathy Gormley-Heenan and Roger Macginty, Ethnic Outbidding and Party…, 31