LONDON — The revelation that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, attempted to create a secret back channel to the Russian government in December has led to a feeding frenzy in the media. Yet there is nothing wrong per se with governments’ having a secret channel to an enemy. Most successful diplomatic negotiations are built on a secret initial phase. Think of the Iran nuclear talks and the Cuba negotiations under the last United States administration, both of which were begun through secret channels.

I have spent the decade since I left public service constructing such channels between other governments and armed groups with the aim of ending civil wars. This is based on my experience in Northern Ireland, where I was the British government’s chief negotiator. The British government had a secret back channel to the Irish Republican Army from 1972 onward, even though Britain was fighting the I.R.A. throughout the quarter-century that followed. This secret channel played a crucial role in bringing about a cease-fire in 1975, the end of the first hunger strike in 1980 and, crucially, the 1994 cease-fire and peace talks under Prime Minister John Major. (The brave Catholic businessman who was the channel’s key conduit, Brendan Duddy, died about three weeks ago.)

Democratic governments use such secret channels because it is very hard to be seen talking to people who are murdering your citizens. Unless you talk to the men with guns and offer them a political way forward, however, they are unlikely to stop fighting.

Governments go to great lengths to disguise what they are doing. Mr. Major stood up in the House of Commons and said he would never talk to the I.R.A., that it would turn his stomach to do so. At the same time, he was corresponding secretly with the I.R.A. leader Martin McGuinness — and thank goodness he was, or there would have been no peace. When the I.R.A. leaked the correspondence in 1993 after that interaction, the Northern Ireland secretary at the time, Patrick Mayhew, was terrified that he would have to resign for lying to Parliament. Instead, he won support from both government and opposition benches for what he had done.