Did last night’s events in Paris leave you sickened? A little afraid, even? Me too. Paris is a city which a lot of us have visited, a place of sidewalk cafes, culture and style. If we know even a few words of a foreign language, it’s likely to be French. So the killing of well over one hundred people in that city has been easy to empathise with. Those attacked, we think, were very like us: in a restaurant for a meal, at a play, at a rock concert. They were brutally killed because they happened to be there.
But they died not just for that reason. The attackers, seven of whom killed themselves and the eighth was killed by French police, didn’t just run amok and kill for no reason. Or give their lives for no reason. “This is for Syria!” one of them is reported to have shouted.
France has been here before. There were the Charlie Hebdo shootings a year ago, but a closer parallel was the Algerian war. In August 1955 the National Liberation Front (FLN) changed tactics from assaults on French military and government-related targets. Near the town of Philipville they killed 123 people, 71 of them French. Those slaughtered included old women and babies. Shocked, the French responded with repression: 12000 Algerians were massacred, and Algerian support swung behind the FLN. Eventually Algerian independence was secured in 1962.
Last night’s events were unadulterated terrorism. For several years now France has been providing weapons and expertise to various rebel groups in Syria. More recently she has worked with the US and participated in bombing missions, which inevitably involve civilian deaths. France’s violent acts in Syria may not be described as unadulterated terrorism, but we can be sure innocent civilians of all ages have died as a result of their actions.
The situation in Syria is so complicated, we don’t really know what questions to ask, let alone have the answers. Is President Assad worse or better than the forces opposed to him? What should Western powers like France do? The war in Syria – is it really a threat to France?
Horribly complicated questions. But two things we can say with some certainty. The attacks in Paris last night were cruel and merciless terrorism in action. The idea behind them was to sicken French opinion so that France will remove itself from the Syrian civil war.
The second thing we can say is that the war in Syria is in Syria. Is French intervention likely to be good for the people of Syria or of France? No. Put crudely: if the French withdraw from Syria, the killings in France will end. What happened last night may well shift French public opinion in that direction.
‘This is for Syria’ and Morocco I suspect!
The France, to quote Frank Gardiner this morning, have been attacked because of their ‘posturing’ but this relatively neutral word hides the suffering of indigenous peoples in those nations they have invaded.
Remember 1169.
Remember 1169? Why just 1169? Why not 1066? Without 1066 1169 may never have happened. Then again why not remember 793 and the first Viking raid by a people who would become the Normans of 1066. So in theory if you’re going to remember 1169 because of a terror attack in 2015, it’s important to go all the way back to 793AD. Then again the people who carried out the attack could say the tenets of their faith began 180 years previous to the first Viking raid, and so by doing what they done they were merely remembering 610AD
Unfortunately no one will have a logical response to this atrocity. The emotions on social media are already at absurd levels. No one will sit back and try to work out why France has become such a big target. I also note the same people who are in solidarity with France aren’t really talking about the innocent people killed in Beirut just yesterday by ISIS terrorists (Maybe it is because they weren’t white? Maybe because they weren’t Christian- although they may have been). No one also seems to be talking about how western powers helped ISIS on their way to try and remove Assad. I think France’s domestic policy is also breeding terrorism. They have alienated many young Muslims and the message sent after Charlie H would have further alienated young Muslims. Silly statement from Obama saying ‘the French won’t be terrorised (they have been several times now) are just going to encourage extremists even more.
yet here they welcome them with open arms and a full benefits package,
I don’t think anyone welcomes ISIS with open arms, who are you talking about Billy?
the sleepers who are slipping in with the rest.
ISIS have the resources to send sleeper cells in through other methods, they don’t need to pose as asylum seekers. Also most terrorists are homegrown. Also 100,000s of refugees, only 1 of one of them in ISIS hardly worth the scaremongering. We can encourage terrorists to attack Assad, flood Syria with Arms, destroy the country and then tell the people they can’t leave the war zone- i don’t think this is an option. We created this awful mess, we can’t complain when it blows back in our face. The civilised word needs to learn from repeated mistakes- we can’t topple a regime and destroy the nation to force freedom on them. It always end bad.
It’s a lot easier to sit in a building somewhere in the US and zap a wedding party by remote control. Forty or fifty innocent people die as collateral damage but this is forgotten amidst all the fist pumping as an alleged ‘terrorist’ has been ‘taken out’. Drop a gang of paras behind enemy lines in France to carry out terrorism and leave the locals to pay the price – terrorism? The western democracies have no business in these countries and will continue to pay the price,unfortunately for civilians.
Sad.story.Jude.I.Will.pray.for.the.victims.God.help.then.
It is easy to forget in the midst of all the coverage of the attacks in France that probably more innocent people died in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other conflicts that we rarely if ever hear about.
France, Britain, America and Russia drop bombs fire missiles and we never hear of the victims; its as if they do not matter.
Unless the powerful nations abandon their hypocritical stances and pay more than lip service to human rights, fair economic systems, put an end to the arms trade and stop cosying up to repressive regimes then these events will occur again and again.
It is all so easy to blame western nations for the global plague of Islamic terrorism and this suits a politically correct, anti-western agenda. I agree that the continuous influence of western nations in supporting dubious regimes in the Middle East has been a contributory factor but is by no means the only one. You have to question the nature of a religious faith which leaves itself open to having horrendous atrocities committed in it’s name and the lack of a central authority to condemn the acts of terrorists who claim the legitimacy to act on it’s behalf. We of course should bring up the shortcomings of the foreign policies pursued by western governments in the Middle Eastern region but one wonders if one would have such latitude to criticize if ISIS or similar evil organizations ever manage to implant their rule in any of our liberal democracies.
What like Christianity? The crusades, the KKK, the shootings in Norway etc. I don’t think you can blame Islam for extremist violence. What about the good Christian loyalist who killed Catholics because their religious leaders told them the Pope was evil and killed all Catholics? Islam is a peaceful religion. If you want to try and argue that Islam is more violent than Christianity of Judaism please read the Bible first.
MAD ARABS
Not sure about Norneverland, Esteemed Blogmeister, but during the Fabulous Fifties in the Free Southern Stateen, to the best of one’s memory, the education system grazed Syria just three times.
1. Damascus and St. Paul
2. ‘The Destruction of Senacherib’ by Lord Byron with its indelible opening couplet:
‘The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold
And its cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold’.
(As Wexford hurlers were in their pomp during those years, in their ganseys of purple and gold, the Model County was often taken for a Middle Eastern County instead of what it actually is, of course, a County in the Sunni South East)
3. In a play by The Great Shakes, naturally enough (He did more of less cover all bases). And in The Scottish Play, oddly enough.
‘Aroint thee witch !, the rump-fed ronyon cried
Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master of the Tiger’.
This glancing reference to Aleppo was uttered via the gap-toothed mouth of the First Witch / Dame Ronyon.
But it was in after-school hours, on the inner-city streets and suburban roads of Dublin which most cultivated an awareness of the Arab World.
There was for instance, a creamery called TEK which deposited morning milk in noisy glass bottles on Dublin doorsteps. To this day there is a TEK Utd soccer, oops, football team in Blackwock, South Dublin. On its crest can be seen: Tel-el-Kebir, a sketch of the Sphinx 1882, TEK Utd, 1946.
Tel-el-Kebir refres to the glorious victory at that Egyptian venue by the outsiders, British Empah Utd over the local hotly favoured Fuzzy Wuzzy Barbarians in the then version of the Champions Intrigue.
But, more to the point, and a factor which dwarfed all the others listed above was an integral part of the street gurrier’s vocabulary: Mad Arab. As an all-purpose term of derogatory endearment, it was the go-to term: ‘Gerrouradat, ya Mad Arab !’.
Even then, Perkie’s inner philologist wondered at its provenance. In the Sixties it seemed to fade away like the shifting sands before eventually disappearing altogether from the lingua franca. No doubt, it has made a robust come back in the 21st C in different guises.
Of course, the Britz were not the only tourists in Mad Arab Land (MAL, that malodorous slice of real estate. But? But, what: what about ‘all the perfumes of Arabia?’, Dun do chlab ! / Hould yer whisht !).
The French were not behind the date palm, either. Indeed, they had long since been major Meddlers sans Frontiers.
In the midst of the Great Donkey Derby / Le Grand Prix d’Anes, two Allied diplomats (!) Francois Georges-Picot of France and Mark Sykes of Britland secretly (?) drew up the post-war division of the Ottoman Empire (including present day Syria) into respective zones of influence.
This became known as the Picot-Sykes Agreeement of (gulp) 1916.
Fast forward to the Battle of Maysalun, a location a dozen miles to the west of Damascus when the French Army of the Levant hockeyed the vastly outgunned and outmanned forces of the Arab Kingdom of Syria.
The victorious General Gouraud self-congratulated his army ‘for engraving a glorious page in our country’s history’. As his army was comprised mainly of sharpshooters from Algeria, Senegal and Morocco, alas, the boudoir warrior did not exactly err on the side of precision when it came to defining what exactly ‘our country’ was.
Robert Fisk is on record as writing: ‘ The Battle of Maysalun is a story which every Syrian learns at school and about which every Western is ignorant’.
Les Meddlers sans Frontiers continue, to this very day, to blast the be-Allah out of the (erm) Mad Arabs.
Pourquoi Paris?
This war on terror is going well, eh? The west has trampled all over the middle east, it has handed out weapons to all sides, no lessons have been learned about the consequences of interfering in foreign countries. The Soviet Union got involved in Afghanistan in the late seventies, the west backed the other side. Look what happened, the same thing is happening now. It is ok for Russia or America or Britain or France to blow people up but the chickens have to come home to roost. You simply can not expect no response, but as usual the only people who will be affected by the carnage whether in Paris or in Syria will be the relatives and loved ones left behind. They will be in mourning and depression long after this story has been replaced by other events.
russia has moved on from the 70s weapons wise..time to use them.
There was no radical Islam when Britain and France carved up Syria and created the Lebanon also giving a large slice of Syria to Turkey.
There was no radical Islam when the Palestinians were forced out of their homeland to atone for Germany’s sins.
There was no radical Islam when Britain and France tried to grab the Suez canal from Egypt.
There was no radical Islam when the Government of Iraq was overthrown by the British and Americans and the murderous puppet Shah installed.
There was no radical Islam when the French killed thousands of Algerians many summarily executed with their hands tied behind their backs.
So much for liberal democracy!
Correction to the above I of course meant Iran not Iraq.
Wahhabism has been around for 300 years long before any european carve up and before the usa was even formed
What happened in Paris last night was shocking. I first heard of it while I was watching the Ireland v Bosnia match on Sky Sports,… well, what I could see of it through the fog. I had my laptop propped up on the sofa arm with all the live feedback from the BBC sports site from all the international games on screen when suddenly there was “Breaking News” concerning explosions and automatic gunfire in Paris. You know the rest.
All those people murdered in Paris didn’t deserve it. Nor did all the innocent people in Iraq/Syria/etc deserve to be murdered. After reading many comments on this topic, the general outlook amongst some is that the “Western peoples” are to blame for all that is happening in the middle east, for the endless hordes of economic migrants/asylum seekers coming into Europe, etc and that we deserve incidents like what happened in Paris last night. Those kind of bullshit opinions I refuse to tolerate.
The Western governments have done many bad things, that’s true but name one Government that hasn’t done bad? The Iraq war was wrong but I can remember millions in the Western World marching against it. Many people, particularly my fellow Irish Republicans, like to bring up the past Imperialism of Britain, France, etc but they can be just as big a hypocrite as any Loyalist can be. Last I looked Imperialism in History wasn’t just embraced by Europeans. The Ottoman Empire was one of the most brutal Empires in History and tried repeatedly to invade Europe and destroy Christianity. The Ottoman Empire was mostly Asian. The Arab Slave trade was far more brutal compared to the Atlantic Slave trade. Indeed there’s more slaves in the world today than in 1700’s and many of them can be found in the likes of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. Soviet Communism was embraced by many, but not all, Irish Republicans and yet the Communist ideology has claimed as many as 300 million lives, far more than Hitlers Nazism.
This self loathing and hypocrisy of many Europeans and Westerners has to end. The attitude of “We’re getting what we deserve” is, to put it crudely, crap. No Western country should be involved in the Middle East. Only the people of the Middle East can sort out their problems. The endless lines of migrants coming into Europe from Africa and Asia will spell disaster for Europe if it continues. If it does continue then expect the rise of the Far Right in Europe just 70 years since it last raised its head. Indeed, the French National Front will find it hard not to smile after the attack in Paris last night.