The Paris Attacks: a Massacre to Exonerate the Murderer and Condemn the Victim
12 December 2015By Eyad Abu Shakra
As expected it didn't take ISIS long to claim responsibility for the Paris
terrorist mass murders.
The evening of 'Friday the 13th' of November 2015 is not a date the people of
France will forget. I dare say too, it will neither be forgotten by every
Arab and Muslim living in France, nor any Syrian still waiting in vain for
some justice.
The heinous massacre that killed and injured hundreds of innocent people is
the product of the 'inverted logic' of a suspect organization, horrible in
choosing its targets, and even more horrible in timing and executing its
carnage. This 'inverted logic' does not harm anyone except the groups that it
claims to defend and uphold, and benefits none but those that it claims to be
its enemies.
Indeed, if we review what ISIS has done so far we find that both in Iraq and
Syria its prime victims have been – next to innocent geographically isolated
minorities – the Sunni Arab regions of northern and north-western Iraq and
northern Syria as well as its major cities; which has been politically,
economically and demographically ruined by ISIS.
These Sunni Arab regions have been the targets of assaults from Iran's
expansionist project, Kurdish secessionist ambitions, and Russia's full cover
for and sponsorship of the sectarian sedition instigated by Syria's regimes
and its backers, against virtual disinterest from Israel, the USA and the
European Union with one exception .. France!
Yes, France; Europe's bravest and most sincere supporter of the Syrian
popular uprising, the most consistent in seeking an end to Bashar Al-Assad's
dictatorship, and the most honest backers of legitimacy in Yemen. Yet,
despite all this, France was and still is ISIS' prime target! 'Conspiracy
Theory' aside, only through ISIS' 'inverted logic' choosing France makes
sense.
Firstly, France is a major country in the heart of Europe that was a founding
member of both the European Union and NATO, and home to the largest Arab and
Muslim communities – mainly, from West Africa. Thus, if ISIS aim is
embroiling Islam – as a global religion – in a suicidal war against the West;
indeed, against the whole humanity, then France becomes a suitable target.
Secondly, France has powerful extreme right wing political parties that are a
serious challenge for power, and get ever more popular whenever they get the
chance to be belligerent against Arabs and Muslims. These parties are the
ideal 'detonators' that speed up this suicidal war that ISIS discourse is
striving to launch. It is obvious that those who planned the Paris massacre
knew beforehand the likely political, social and cultural consequences of
their outrage, but in their calculations the more 'racist' or xenophobic the
reaction against the French Arabs and Muslims gets the more frustrated and
wronged gangs would emerge from their communities, thus, making easier the
job of recruiting extremists and terrorists for their future 'grand war'.
Thirdly, if one does not discount the 'Conspiracy Theory', let's go no
further than the main beneficiary from the timing of the Paris massacre. It
was committed a few hours before the convening of the 'Vienna 2' meeting
aimed at finding a solution to the Syrian Crisis. This act of awful violence
serves first and foremost the interests of those who have insisted in
shifting the 'Vienna 2' meeting away from finding a political solution for
Syria based on President Bashar Al-Assad stepping down. It is a well-known
fact that the Al-Assad's main backers, Russia and Iran, are still calling to
regard the Syrian Crisis merely as a 'war against terrorism', and see Al-Assad
as an integral part of it. Reports that one of the assailants in Paris
mentioned the word 'Syria', and then that a Syrian passport (anybody can buy
a fake passport) was found near an assailant's body means that the suspect
intelligence-inspired intentions of the planners to link the responsibility
to the Syrian people's uprising, although the carnage took place without its
knowledge or blessings.
Fourthly, a well-coordinated and logistically perfected murderous operation
like the Paris massacre totally rules out the notion of naïveté or stupidity,
at least at the planners' level, even though those who executed it were
willing to become 'human bombs' and were brain-washed and dehumanised
individuals. Here we are confronting a highly organized network led by
sophisticated and knowledgeable authorities that pulls its strings and
manages its budget, in a way similar to someone trading in oils and
antiquities; buying brand new Toyota trucks and advanced weapons, and
successfully handling smuggling, training, media and publishing.
Thus the 'war against ISIS', if the international community is truly serious
about it, needs to be carried out differently. The suspect role played out by
ISIS' actions and battles – both genuine and theatrical – deserves to be
encountered in a way congruent with international pronouncements, instead of
turning a blind eye to the tragic realities the extremist organization is
forcing on the ground through a frightening partition, that sooner or later
will destroy the Near East's political entities, and sow the seeds of endless
animosities and catastrophes.
The Paris massacre, as well as any crime perpetrated by terrorist 'sleeping
cells' or 'lone wolves' in Europe, or any other place on Earth in the name of
Islam, is a major landmark in the war against terrorism. However, it is
incumbent on any serious analyst to study past incidents of this nature.
In Lebanon particularly, there are amazing examples. Terrorist acts, as well
as aborted acts, whose perpetrators – from various religious sects –were
discovered, were indeed linked to certain intelligence agencies. Perhaps the
most infamous of those were the so-called 'Abu Adas case' intended to divert
the investigation of the Rafiq Hariri assassination, and 'the Michel Samaha
scandal' pertaining to attempts to carry out explosions and political
assassination with the intention of causing a bloody sectarian conflict. The
Syrian regime's intelligence agencies were later uncovered to be behind both.
Thus, with regards to the cleansing intended to facilitate redrawing of the
political maps of the Region, some observers link the recent terrorist
explosions in Lebanon – the latest of which was carried out in the Beirut
Shi'ite suburb of Burj al-Barajeneh – to justifying the long term plan of
uprooting the populations of Sunni towns that are as yet delaying the
emergence of one of the desired maps. This is, actually, what was exposed by
Iran's push for population exchange between the Sunni population of the town
Zabadani and neighbouring towns and villages west of Damascus and the
population of the Shi'ite enclaves in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib in
northern Syria.
One last note; ISIS and those who have created and are now exploiting it are
two faces of the same coin!
Eyad Abu Shakra is the managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat. He has been with
the newspaper since 1978.
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