Terrorism and its aftermath

Since last Friday's tragic events in Paris, there has been a deluge of comments on Facebook and in the world media mostly calling for drastic measures to deal with terrorism. This predictably includes military retribution with deadly air raids and bombing in... distant lands. Amid the cacophony of belligerents who are hell-bent on war abroad, there is sometimes a lone voice which dares to make measured and sensical comments. One such voice is that of a former French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, who unfortunately belongs to a very tiny minority in France. Tuesday's speech by Francois Hollande was disappointing but entirely predictable. Very little, if at all, seems to have been learnt since the attack against Charlie Hebdo in January this year. Let us take a quick look back at terrorism in recent years which is very different to that of, say, the Baader-Meinof ‘gang’ in the 1970s in Germany. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the only solution imagined by the US President Georges W Bush and the neo-cons in Washington was a brutal war, the so-called “war on terror”, in Afghanistan. This war claimed so many civilian lives and killed many of the United States' former allies who, it has to be remembered, were previously trained and armed by the US to fight the Soviets in the mountains of Afghanistan. Chomsky did warn that retaliation against the Afghans for the 9/11 attacks will only result in a far greater number of civilian casualties than the deaths which occurred in Washington in September 2001. But large swathes of public opinion in the US were for the military intervention, and so war it was. The memory of Vietnam had seemingly receded in the distant past. In 2003, the US-led coalition turned their attention to Iraq, an ex-ally of the West which encouraged it to launch a bitter and bloody war against its neighbour Iran. The war lasted eight years and claimed between 1.3 and 1.5 million lives. But now Iraq was considered an enemy. The country was invaded, this time against a very strong tide of public opinion which manifested across the world against the planned military invasion of Iraq. The country’s infrastructures were blown up, oil wells seized, the museum of Baghdad allowed to be looted and hundreds of thousands of people killed. When asked how many people they killed in Iraq, the Americans replied: “We don’t do body counts”. Clearly the lives of the Iraqis did not matter one iota. Al-Qaeda's influence spread further afield. On 11 March 2004, trains in Madrid were hit by a series of terrorist bombs. And, on 7 July 2005, public transport in London was similarly targeted. Anti-terrorism laws followed. Security tightened. Civil liberties eroded. With air raids and drone attacks in a vicious circle of retaliation, an increasing number of civilians were caught and killed in the middle of a war they never wanted and have nothing to do with. An outright military folly unleashed with vastly superior firepower and technology, an asymmetrical “war” which inflicted injuries to thousands of people and forced millions of others to seek refuge outside their home countries. Anti-Arab feeling flared. Muslims across the whole world came under sustained attack. They were stigmatised and discriminated against. Their religion demonised. Let's not even talk about the West's double standards with regard to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrein, etc. Or Obama’s Cairo speech and the recurrent theme and promise of a Palestinian State. Or the blatant violations of human rights in the prisons of Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo. Or the violence of State terrorism against the Palestinians trapped within the Gaza Strip. All of these do nothing but fuel terrorism. There is also the fact that military intervention in Libya has made things worse, and not just in a country where Blair, Sarkozy and others wanted to do business with Colonel Gaddafi before deciding upon regime change. We need to understand how this was presented to the public and consent for military intervention manufactured. Similarly, we need to grasp the quagmire which Syria represents, the foolishness of bombing raids and the resulting mess in a country still led by Bachar el-Assad. The gung-ho approach and muscular response to the 9/11 attacks were thought to see the end of the terrorists. But they only served to radicalise further a few of them who, sadly, claimed to fight back in the name of Islam. The situation in Iraq which became a divided country and a haven for terrorists in the wake of the West’s invasion, and in Syria where a destructive civil war by proxy has been going on since 2011, led to the emergence of a monster: Daech, a sinister terrorist organisation which has claimed responsibility for the attacks which shook the French capital last Friday night and reverberated the world over. Further backlash against Muslims (Arabs and others) is now expected. Never mind if the overwhelming majority of them keep pointing out that "Islamists" have nothing to do with Islam, most Western leaders, the corporate media and large sections of the public in Western ‘democracies’ see these law-abiding Muslims as "suspects".  Their harassment and humiliation of these Muslims will go on in various ways while millions of them are told to distance themselves from the terrorists (!) or to publicly apologise for murderous acts committed by a handful of nutcases with whom they are not related in any way. In spite of all the security measures, repressive methods, anti-terrorist legislations used in the West along with the ongoing, relentless military strikes and bombing raids which result in untold physical damage and psychological suffering on the ground, terrorism has not been destroyed. After a lull, it rears its ugly head again and again. France has been hit twice this year by terrorist attacks. The measures which have just been decided upon by France and its allies do not augur well for the future. Because of the madness and foolishness of these measures which assign a higher priority to a military solution at the expense of a diplomatic and political solution, it is to be feared that terrorists might strike again, sooner or later.