The horrific terror attacks in Paris sent shock waves all around last Friday, as ISIS claimed the killing of 129 people, prompting widespread international condemnation and outpouring of support for the French.
Along with other ghastly acts of terrorism including the December 16, 2014 Taliban massacre of 150 schoolchildren and teachers in Peshawar, the Paris attacks remind humanity of dangers that loom over civilian lives around the world. The loss of lives also points out the need for an objective evaluation of the post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts. In the more immediate perspective, the attacks call into question the international response to the ongoing Middle Eastern imbroglio, which has led to a spillover of humanitarian catastrophe.
The Paris attacks coincide with Europe’s challenge to grapple with an unprecedented influx of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and some African countries. Now the Paris tragedy and the Russian finding that its plane was blown midair, as claimed by ISIS or Da’ish, over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, have sharpened the international focus on the group’s terror threat.
Meanwhile, the fight between radical forces and repressive regimes in the Muslim world has taken a precarious turn with an inflammatory mix of Iraqi and Syrian civil wars. Some broad consequences of these civil wars include: emergence of new regional terror groups like ISIS or the Da’ish; perpetuation of indiscriminate state terror against civilians as by Bashar al-Assad; expansion of the alluring trap that the Da’ish casts for young people with the promise of a utopian world; and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis that has led to refugees’ mass migration to Europe.
A disjointed world approach to the Middle Eastern upheaval, which began with moderate forces’ Arab Spring struggle for democracy, has worsened the predicament. The Arab struggle for democracy has transitioned into the hands of radical forces due to status quo defending rulers’ suppression of democratic voices in Syria, Iraq and Egypt. Five years of multiple Syrian conflicts are now threatening the international community in a reminder that the islands of stability are not insulated against a sea of troubles.
All along, since 9/11 terror attacks, there has been the very real challenge of competing with the militant narrative. Militant groups like al-Qaeda, Taliban and the Da’ish have used social media to exploit young people’s litany of grievances in poor countries as well as backyards of rich Europe with a promise to usher in a new dream world. But, according to the militant propaganda, these young people must first trigger an apocalypse through prosecution of terror. To them, social media is a key instrument of terror.
Other causes that brew terror over time include failure of the world system to respond to economic and political inequality afflicting marginalized communities. It is from these alienated segments that militant groups find their fodder in the form of young disillusioned people.
Consequently, the world has failed to counter the stark militant propaganda. Individually, some countries like Canada have adjusted to rapid globalization through successful assimilation of economic migrants and side-by-side existence of different cultures. Germany is the latest example of taking in a large number of Syrian refugees. America has always been a multicultural place with economic opportunity – a point President Barack Obama highlighted when he drew some European countries’ attention to doing a better job of integrating Muslim minorities earlier this year. Earlier, attacks on Charlie Hebdo journalists, also gave rise to a discussion on the question of France assimilating its migrant population.
What has happened in France in recent years that made it a target of terror? A fierce protection of French laicite or secularism, a sense of economic deprivation among immigrant youth, enforcement of discriminatory laws like a ban on Muslim girls wearing headscarves in schools, colonial era burden, or a combination of all these factors?
Elaine Sciolino, a Paris-based American journalist and author of book The Only Street in Paris, told NPR’s Fresh Air program how troubled Parisian suburbs, home to Muslim immigrants with a high unemployment rate, are a “fertile breeding ground” for extremism.
“Every person who carries a French passport is to look and feel and act as if he or she is French in a very uniform kind of way,” Sciolino said, but “those with an Arab-sounding last name or a Muslim-sounding last name are stigmatized.”
The French societal rejection of inclusiveness contrasts with growing multiculturalism and diversity in other large western democracies.
Then there are longstanding political disputes, which militants use to advance their agenda. Are the major powers complementing the military campaigns against militancy with socio-economic uplift measures and resolution of political disputes like Kashmir and Israel? Regionally, Saudi-Iranian rivalry continues to play out along sectarian and ethnic lines.
Also, on the political level, some countries have sought to frame terrorism in terms of a fight between Islam and the west. Such statements contradict ground realities, since terror groups, al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and ISIS in Iraq and Syria, have killed far more Muslims than any other people. For extremists, the fight begins at home as they want to impose their literalist version of Islam. Europe witnessed such religious violence between Christian factions on the issues of reform during the medieval era. In Pakistan, forces of extremism targeted progressive and democratic voices like Benazir Bhutto and many other politicians as well as girls rights activist Malala Yousafzai, who has been a symbol of courage and conviction against terrorism since surviving a 2012 Taliban attack.
In a commentary following Paris attacks, Anthony H Cordesman, the Arleigh A Burke Chair in Strategy at Center for Strategic and International Studies, notes that “Europe, the United States, and countries without large Muslim populations are not the victim of some “clash of civilizations,” and points out that “every death and casualty matters, but France, the United States and other “outside” states are only minor targets that are the spillover of a massive clash to shape the future of Islamic civilization.”
“Horrible as every pointless death from terrorism in the west is, it must be compared to violence within Islam that has killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in recent years, halted economic life and development in several countries, and produced millions of displaced persons and refugees,” he adds.
Clearly, France is a victim of both the spillover effect of the Middle Eastern conundrum and its own home-grown terror. Any way out of the French travail must unavoidably troubleshoot both problems. While military action may contain the ISIS in Raqqa and other parts of Syria, it is societal and economic integration that would assimilate the jobless youth in Parisian suburbs, and deprive militants of oxygen to survive. Islamophobia in far right parts of the French society and politics – as reported by several media outlets — and one-size-fits-all state approach would only prolong unrest in the land, which projected the concept of liberty, equality and fraternity. In the age of the social media, France and other European countries also cannot scapegoat refugees for Europe’s continental disconnect in information sharing, even between Brussels and Paris.
With this background, a critical dimension to curbing terror everywhere would be progress towards peaceful coexistence at national, regional and international levels. If based on UN principles of pluralism, democratic equality and economic development, that progress would heal the wounded world. Paris attacks are also an excruciating reminder that a festering state of conflict- – group terror, civil wars, inequality, alienation, stigmatization of the “other” and state terrorism as seen in the Middle East — could spawn an unknown situation with dangers like cyber attacks, that, in turn, may even disrupt the march of civilization by shrinking civil liberties and economic opportunities. The need of the hour for the international community is to get together to address the plight of Syrian refugees as well as focus on resolving root causes of all these problems.
Featered Image is French Embassy in Prague : Photo Credit: Jan Polák (http://creativecommons via Wikimedia Common
