Pain in Paris

Black Friday indeed

After well-laid plans over surprisingly ample time, terrorists armed with automatic weapons and wearing suicide vests struck at soft targets in the heart of France, its city of lights and love, Paris. The capital, famous for its Latin Quarter and West Bank cafes, frequented once upon a time long ago by the giants of literature and the Great Masters of painting, experienced perhaps the darkest hour of its history since the Second World War. Its citizens, fond of gourmet food, good wines, drama, music and also soccer-crazy (Nobel Prize winning novelist Albert Camus among them), were hit with a disturbing ease in familiar, but seemingly utterly vulnerable spots, where it hurt the most: a concert hall, a couple of restaurants and bars and outside a football stadium in which the French president, Francois Hollande, was also among the spectators of a German-French game. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) later claimed that these were ‘precisely chosen locations’ being symbols of the capital city’s ‘prostitution and vice’. Casualty figures are said to be 129 dead and 200-plus still in hospitals. Some among the wounded may have suffered grievous and possibly fatal injuries during the explosions, as our own experience in Pakistan shows, apart from the unfortunates disfigured and disabled for life. So the cold-blooded murder and maiming of so many innocent people, who were just relaxing and enjoying themselves at the start of a weekend, has rightly sent a shiver of fear and a wave of anger around the world.

The Parisians, though putting on a brave face, are obviously stunned and awaiting the results of the ongoing investigation into the whole affair. The French president, deeply unpopular at home because of a struggling economy and record unemployment, swiftly ordered immediate air strikes against the ISIS stronghold in Syria as France’s ‘pitiless’ and ‘merciless’ response, and threatened to ‘destroy the ISIS’. The Latin temperament is hotheaded, flamboyant and expressive, both in words and gestures, and at a time of tragedy of this scale, it is bound to break all barriers of restraint and diplomatic civility. Hence the French presidents’ rather Rambo-like reaction and remarks. He also sought the imposition of a three-month emergency throughout France from parliament in order to facilitate the security and criminal justice authorities in the war against the fellow travellers of the ISIS who were citizens of and residents in France. These, then, are the facts and figures of what transpired in Paris on the night of Friday, the thirteenth of November, a ‘Black Friday’ indeed, in the literal sense of the term, and not in its crass commercial connotation.

In view of the place, intensity and audacity of the action, the mills of the conspiracy theorists also started grinding well and overtime. All smelled a rat somewhere. How could the powerful intelligence agencies of France, Germany, the USA, and of course, Israel with the global reach of its Unit 8200, not have had any inkling of what was in the works at multiple locations over a period of many months? How was it possible for all the modern weaponry and the suicide vests to be smuggled into the country without anyone detecting any foul play? What kind of a backlash will the base deed ignite against the French Muslim population of about five million, especially at the hands of the raucous extreme right wing parties and groupings? Why was Turkey’s warning about the terrorist plot mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud not heeded? How could the fugitive Salah Abdesalam, one of the prime suspects, be interrogated at a checkpoint by the police and then allowed to go scot-free, apparently after the attacks had taken place? Was the suppression or non-sharing of timely intelligence a ‘price tag’ or a payback for the French parliament’s decision to pass a non-binding resolution urging the government to recognise Palestine as a separate state (on December 2, 2014), which infuriated the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had called it a ‘grave mistake’? Was the passport of a Syrian refugee found (or thrown) at one site intended to halt the asylum on humanitarian grounds of Muslim immigrant hordes into Europe, as it would eventually pit them against the long-established Jewish population of these countries? So far, the governors of 26 out of the 50 American states have refused to take in any refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war, a decision that President Oback Obama (who had agreed to take in 10,000 over the next twelve months) termed as ‘hysterical’. In fact, where have all the refugees, who were dominating the western media news coverage in the last few weeks, vanished? Should one substitute Israel for ISIS to light up the behind the scene actor of the Paris attacks, as alleged by Iranian Basij commander Brig Gen Mohammad Reza Naqdi? Or was the act also connected with the Israeli–Palestine conflict, as asserted by the Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom and the head of the Dutch Socialist Party, Jan Marijnissen? For that matter, why was Raqqi in Syria, the de facto capital of the ISIS, and Mosul and the oil trade, the mainstay of the ‘caliphate’ finances, not bombed and interdicted before? Has the building of the Third Temple on its alleged Biblical site something to do with the attacks by demonising the Muslims in the 28 member states of the European Union, some of whom are pro-Palestinian? Is there indeed a master brain, a guiding and directing hand, or a grand design behind it all?

The questions keep piling up, and so far there are all questions and no, or few, answers. But if 9/11 served a definite purpose, the beginnings and the ends of this equally suspicious French version of that action, though on a lesser scale, still remain to be seen.

In this unjust, double-standards world of ours, no one is innocent, no one is safe. One should not forget that it was the then French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe who introduced and pushed hard for the passing of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 ostensibly to create a ‘no fly zone’ over Libya and to protect civilians in the civil war, though control of Libyan ‘light sweet’ crude, ideal for French refineries, might well have something to do with it! Adopted by the Council on March 17, 2011, it was turned into an excuse for a massive aerial bombing campaign against Col Muammar Qaddafi’s forces starting on March 19, by a multi-national coalition, spearheaded by the French air force and that other usual suspect, Britain. One innocuous phrase authorising member states ‘to take all necessary measures’ in paragraph four of the Resolution sealed the late dictator’s fate, resulting in his murder in cold blood, and the utter ruin of Libya (like Iraq before it and Syria after). First, a relapse into tribalism and the rise of sectarianism, then the still ongoing civil war causing thousands of casualties and now the growing ingress and influence of the dreaded ISIS in the country are its bitter harvest. And so, as always, the wheel turns full circle.