Abu Hena :
As the families of soldiers killed in the Iraq war have vowed to sue Tony Blair for ‘every penny’, the former British prime minister could face a civil lawsuit over allegations that he abused his power to take the country to war. The Chilcot report published on July 6 concluded that Blair had overstated the case for military intervention in Iraq in March 2003 as there was ‘no imminent threat’ posed by Saddam Hussein and it was not the ‘last resort’. At a press conference following the publication Sarah O’Connor , whose brother was killed in Iraq in 2005, called Blair “the world’s worst terrorist”. Blair in a press conference admitted that he told former US president George W Bush that he was ‘with him, whatever’, but that did not mean a secret commitment to war at any costs.
When Tony Blair was at the center of the detailed inquiry that proved Britain’s responsibility for the US led war that killed hundreds of thousands and reduced the Gulf region and the world into a battlefield, France was hit by a third major violent attack in less than 18 months. The death toll from these attacks has reached 250. In the primary estimate 84 people were killed in the last attack leaving 202 wounded, 17 of whom are still in critical condition. The attacks have shaken the country to the core. The last incident took place on the Bastille Day on 14 July, as the anniversary of the French Revolution was being celebrated. It was the day the inhabitants of Paris stormed the Bastille prison in 1789. It held symbolic resonance as a revolt against the absolute monarchy. Two days later the National Assembly forced the king to accept the revolutionary Tricolore in the national colors of blue, white and red as a symbol of unity between the king and the people. These acts marked the beginning of the Revolution, which was based on the ideals of “Liberty. Equality, Fraternity”.
This time a Tunisian French lorry driver named Mohamed Bouhlel drove his 20- ton truck in a mile long rampage mowing over 40000 men, women and children who were watching the fireworks display in the French Riviera before he was shot and killed by the police. The Tunisian was an alcohol -drinking, pork- eating, mentally disturbed maniac who neither prayed nor observed fasts in Ramadan. His father said that his son was on medication for psychiatric problems. The French prosecutor found no sign that the attacker was radicalized and his links with the ISIS or any other radical groups could not be established. He was known to police as he was sentenced to 6 months’ suspended prison terms. He was not under intelligence watch of the French Security Service. In the November attack a network was involved. This time, it was an isolated incident by an womanizer , not a practicing Muslim. Yet the French President immediately came out with the revelation that the attack was carried out by the ISIS to “instill fear and panic”. He announced intensified airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on ISIS positions and called up 12000 reservists extending the state of emergency all of which aggravates the situation further instead of addressing the problem by reality check. With nine months to the presidential election political and religious extremes will continue to feed off each other.
A parliamentary investigation into the Paris attack of November 2015 had concluded that there had been a “global failure” of the country’s security and intelligence services. The latest incident further exposed the extreme vulnerability of French security. People are angry and outraged. They booed President Francois Hollande shouting “you are a murderer” as his motorcade passed by. The emergency has failed. People have lost confidence in the government. Hollande’s popularity rating has dropped below 11 percent. There could be a civil war, people taking the law into their own hand amidst acrimonious feelings which are high. The opposition leaders who on earlier occasions demonstrated unity and solidarity have now distanced themselves as the President’s actions have put the nation on war footing, heightened religious and ethnic tensions feeding growing partisan polarization. The effects will be felt across Europe giving a boost to xenophobic narratives seriously affecting one million immigrants and refugees who arrived in Europe during the past year.
France is already confronted with the lingering burning question how to integrate second and third generation immigrants coming from its colonies who feel totally alienated. The ideas of the French Revolution which had lasting effects spread well beyond France. The revolutionaries strove to establish laws which would above all provide equality for all people. To achieve this, basic human rights would have to be acknowledged, and barriers to social mobility removed. The aspiration towards freedom, self- determination, equality before the law and preservation of human rights found support not only in the European societies but among all societies of the world. Even with the post-Revolution “reign of terror” and subsequent beheadings, the revolutionary motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” never died. But now many in France wonder whether the country which gifted the Statue of Liberty to the United States believes in the motto any more.
Indeed, things changed completely when the Western European powers fiercely competed with one another over the acquisition and foundation of colonies within continents including Africa. They now linked imperialism with the racist ideology of “white race superiority” as justification for their expanding influence and explosive use of foreign markets for trade in all commodities including the slave trade. From 1830 France colonized Algeria, Equatorial Africa and Tunisia in 1881, Madagascar in 1895 Morocco in 1911. While European colonization brought with it some technological modernization its larger effect was economic exploitation.
The modern age began with the world’s bloody entrance into the First World War. The battles of trench warfare with immense loss of life and materials led to brutalization, disillusionment, and demoralization. New weaponry was used on a massive scale and while the civilian population suffered from the drawn-out war, thousands of soldiers returned home morally, physically and emotionally ravaged. The battlefields resembled plowed over moonscapes. The promenade in Nice had the same look on 14 July.
The World War II cost the lives of up to 62 million people. The terror against civilian populations assumed unknown dimensions. The war set the cornerstone for the subsequent division of most of the world into opposing American and Soviet spheres of influence. The world was divided according to East-West conflict which was characterized by the Cold War and an arms race threatening mankind with a nuclear war. With the diffusing of the East-West conflict, a new phenomenon emerged on the lines of class, religion, and ethnicity. The rich countries of North America, Europe and East Asia became the centers of the new economic order, carrying new social values , consumer culture and service industry profiting the rich countries .Through advances in technology, communication has been radically changed with instant connections provided by the internet. When the wealthy nations using their position are trying to impose their own values the domination of the industrialized Western nations is facing increased resistance. Poverty and suppression have created fertile breeding grounds for religious fundamentalists who are fighting against secularization and westernization which openly display total disrespect particularly for the fundamentals of Islam, its prophet and its two billion followers world over. As a result, emerging radical Islamist groups have shown their willingness to resort to resistance which sometimes turns violent. Compounding this problem is the influence of Christian fundamentalists in the United States .The contemporary conflicts mainly center round the Christian control and domination over oil and gas reserves in the Middle East which are owned by the Muslims. The progress of science and technology too has benefitted mainly the western countries. Although genetic research and advances in medicine have treated numerous diseases , there exists no remedy for the outbreak of AIDS. As many as 37 million people are infected by AIDS virus in Africa alone.
Resistance to Western domination is now growing, expressed most clearly in the violence of Islamic radicals who are inspired by the Jihadist concept . But terror also had its origin in Europe. Non -state groups and organizations have constantly resorted to violence in their struggle against the prevailing dominating political system. In Europe, terrorism reached a climax during the 1970s with the campaigns of extreme leftist groups such as the RAF and the Red Brigade. During the student protest movements of the 1960s radical splinter groups emerged in Western Germany. Among these was the leftist radical group, the Red Army Faction (RAF).The RAF called for armed resistance against the political and economic system of the Federal Republic, which they felt to be inhumane and fascist. They modeled themselves after South American urban guerillas. They carried out kidnappings and assassinations of representatives of West German industry, politics and judiciary. Originally a secret society in Italy, the Mafia has extended beyond Sicily into Europe and the United States. Numerous politicians and business owners have been connected to these criminal organizations, including the Italian Presidents Andreotti and Berlusconi. The Mafia reacted to the investigations of public prosecutors and judges with terror attacks.
With the resolution of the East-West conflict, the scenario of a worldwide war between the superpowers was averted. The current global conflicts are no longer between the armies of two nations with clearly defined fronts. Instead civil wars and terrorism have increasingly come to define modern conflict. Today’s issue is how to be effective in new styles of combat. When the Christian West is trying to portray the Islamic East as terrorists, they must realize that for all the horrific acts of terror committed in the world in the past, it is the Christian West which is to blame .It is largely because of their imperialistic policies that the world is now confronted with 60 million displaced people, at least ninety percent of whom are Muslims.
Although France granted independence to its former protectorates Morocco and Tunisia in1956, the Algerian War took an extremely destructive form between 1954 and 1962and it was tied to political crisis in France. The Algerian government’s socialist state course and an western backed army coup in 1962 resulted in a brutal civil war in which more than two hundred thousand people were killed. All the three countries with cities characterized by their French colonial history are subject to internal clashes between religious and social traditions and a forced westernization of lifestyles which is resulting in massive discrepancies between urban and rural regions. In Morocco and Tunisia, governments steered an authoritarian course of modernization and waged a war against opposition Islamist groups. Islamic zealots , on the other hand , propagated a return to the traditional values of Islam emphasizing their cultural superiority .
The Islamic concept of social justice, equality, tolerance, and compassion remained in the forefront of the Muslims for over a millennium when great empires like the Turkish Empire and the Mughal Empire were built following the excellent pattern provided in the Quran: “And let there be from you a nation inviting to good, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, and those will be successful.” Wherever the Muslims went they were visionary lawgivers, patrons of arts, letters and sciences and architects of enduring empires. Without the Islamic civilization which spread its wings over Europe from Spain during 800 years of Muslim rule it is hard to imagine the western history working out the way as it did, for those were the roads that carried the outside ideas and transmitted scientific knowledge and technology westwards and opened up European minds to the vastness of the world.
The Authoritarian governments in Tunisia and Algeria denied the people their democratic right to elect their governments through election and led to an outright war between the vast majority of people who supported an Islamic way of life and secularists who used force to suppress the people’s voice.
The suppression and coercion of the autocratic regimes pushed the disgruntled Muslim factions into a violence that offends the basic tenets of Islam. An aggressive secularism forced the fundamentalists to fight for survival and because their backs were to the wall they had no other way but to fight their way out of the impasse. In this frame of mind some resorted to violence and committed acts of terror when the majority tried to establish their faith in a more conventional, lawful way. The reason why a Tunisian youth Mohamed Bouhlel drove a 20 ton lorry in a mile long rampage in Nice on the Bastille Day on 14 July, is embedded in the French colonial history itself. The French prime minister who was also booed during the memorial service rightly said, “France will have to live with terrorism.” France’s only escape from shipwreck lies in the integration of the immigrants coming from the former colonies on the basis of the Revolutionary motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity .”
As the families of soldiers killed in the Iraq war have vowed to sue Tony Blair for ‘every penny’, the former British prime minister could face a civil lawsuit over allegations that he abused his power to take the country to war. The Chilcot report published on July 6 concluded that Blair had overstated the case for military intervention in Iraq in March 2003 as there was ‘no imminent threat’ posed by Saddam Hussein and it was not the ‘last resort’. At a press conference following the publication Sarah O’Connor , whose brother was killed in Iraq in 2005, called Blair “the world’s worst terrorist”. Blair in a press conference admitted that he told former US president George W Bush that he was ‘with him, whatever’, but that did not mean a secret commitment to war at any costs.
When Tony Blair was at the center of the detailed inquiry that proved Britain’s responsibility for the US led war that killed hundreds of thousands and reduced the Gulf region and the world into a battlefield, France was hit by a third major violent attack in less than 18 months. The death toll from these attacks has reached 250. In the primary estimate 84 people were killed in the last attack leaving 202 wounded, 17 of whom are still in critical condition. The attacks have shaken the country to the core. The last incident took place on the Bastille Day on 14 July, as the anniversary of the French Revolution was being celebrated. It was the day the inhabitants of Paris stormed the Bastille prison in 1789. It held symbolic resonance as a revolt against the absolute monarchy. Two days later the National Assembly forced the king to accept the revolutionary Tricolore in the national colors of blue, white and red as a symbol of unity between the king and the people. These acts marked the beginning of the Revolution, which was based on the ideals of “Liberty. Equality, Fraternity”.
This time a Tunisian French lorry driver named Mohamed Bouhlel drove his 20- ton truck in a mile long rampage mowing over 40000 men, women and children who were watching the fireworks display in the French Riviera before he was shot and killed by the police. The Tunisian was an alcohol -drinking, pork- eating, mentally disturbed maniac who neither prayed nor observed fasts in Ramadan. His father said that his son was on medication for psychiatric problems. The French prosecutor found no sign that the attacker was radicalized and his links with the ISIS or any other radical groups could not be established. He was known to police as he was sentenced to 6 months’ suspended prison terms. He was not under intelligence watch of the French Security Service. In the November attack a network was involved. This time, it was an isolated incident by an womanizer , not a practicing Muslim. Yet the French President immediately came out with the revelation that the attack was carried out by the ISIS to “instill fear and panic”. He announced intensified airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on ISIS positions and called up 12000 reservists extending the state of emergency all of which aggravates the situation further instead of addressing the problem by reality check. With nine months to the presidential election political and religious extremes will continue to feed off each other.
A parliamentary investigation into the Paris attack of November 2015 had concluded that there had been a “global failure” of the country’s security and intelligence services. The latest incident further exposed the extreme vulnerability of French security. People are angry and outraged. They booed President Francois Hollande shouting “you are a murderer” as his motorcade passed by. The emergency has failed. People have lost confidence in the government. Hollande’s popularity rating has dropped below 11 percent. There could be a civil war, people taking the law into their own hand amidst acrimonious feelings which are high. The opposition leaders who on earlier occasions demonstrated unity and solidarity have now distanced themselves as the President’s actions have put the nation on war footing, heightened religious and ethnic tensions feeding growing partisan polarization. The effects will be felt across Europe giving a boost to xenophobic narratives seriously affecting one million immigrants and refugees who arrived in Europe during the past year.
France is already confronted with the lingering burning question how to integrate second and third generation immigrants coming from its colonies who feel totally alienated. The ideas of the French Revolution which had lasting effects spread well beyond France. The revolutionaries strove to establish laws which would above all provide equality for all people. To achieve this, basic human rights would have to be acknowledged, and barriers to social mobility removed. The aspiration towards freedom, self- determination, equality before the law and preservation of human rights found support not only in the European societies but among all societies of the world. Even with the post-Revolution “reign of terror” and subsequent beheadings, the revolutionary motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” never died. But now many in France wonder whether the country which gifted the Statue of Liberty to the United States believes in the motto any more.
Indeed, things changed completely when the Western European powers fiercely competed with one another over the acquisition and foundation of colonies within continents including Africa. They now linked imperialism with the racist ideology of “white race superiority” as justification for their expanding influence and explosive use of foreign markets for trade in all commodities including the slave trade. From 1830 France colonized Algeria, Equatorial Africa and Tunisia in 1881, Madagascar in 1895 Morocco in 1911. While European colonization brought with it some technological modernization its larger effect was economic exploitation.
The modern age began with the world’s bloody entrance into the First World War. The battles of trench warfare with immense loss of life and materials led to brutalization, disillusionment, and demoralization. New weaponry was used on a massive scale and while the civilian population suffered from the drawn-out war, thousands of soldiers returned home morally, physically and emotionally ravaged. The battlefields resembled plowed over moonscapes. The promenade in Nice had the same look on 14 July.
The World War II cost the lives of up to 62 million people. The terror against civilian populations assumed unknown dimensions. The war set the cornerstone for the subsequent division of most of the world into opposing American and Soviet spheres of influence. The world was divided according to East-West conflict which was characterized by the Cold War and an arms race threatening mankind with a nuclear war. With the diffusing of the East-West conflict, a new phenomenon emerged on the lines of class, religion, and ethnicity. The rich countries of North America, Europe and East Asia became the centers of the new economic order, carrying new social values , consumer culture and service industry profiting the rich countries .Through advances in technology, communication has been radically changed with instant connections provided by the internet. When the wealthy nations using their position are trying to impose their own values the domination of the industrialized Western nations is facing increased resistance. Poverty and suppression have created fertile breeding grounds for religious fundamentalists who are fighting against secularization and westernization which openly display total disrespect particularly for the fundamentals of Islam, its prophet and its two billion followers world over. As a result, emerging radical Islamist groups have shown their willingness to resort to resistance which sometimes turns violent. Compounding this problem is the influence of Christian fundamentalists in the United States .The contemporary conflicts mainly center round the Christian control and domination over oil and gas reserves in the Middle East which are owned by the Muslims. The progress of science and technology too has benefitted mainly the western countries. Although genetic research and advances in medicine have treated numerous diseases , there exists no remedy for the outbreak of AIDS. As many as 37 million people are infected by AIDS virus in Africa alone.
Resistance to Western domination is now growing, expressed most clearly in the violence of Islamic radicals who are inspired by the Jihadist concept . But terror also had its origin in Europe. Non -state groups and organizations have constantly resorted to violence in their struggle against the prevailing dominating political system. In Europe, terrorism reached a climax during the 1970s with the campaigns of extreme leftist groups such as the RAF and the Red Brigade. During the student protest movements of the 1960s radical splinter groups emerged in Western Germany. Among these was the leftist radical group, the Red Army Faction (RAF).The RAF called for armed resistance against the political and economic system of the Federal Republic, which they felt to be inhumane and fascist. They modeled themselves after South American urban guerillas. They carried out kidnappings and assassinations of representatives of West German industry, politics and judiciary. Originally a secret society in Italy, the Mafia has extended beyond Sicily into Europe and the United States. Numerous politicians and business owners have been connected to these criminal organizations, including the Italian Presidents Andreotti and Berlusconi. The Mafia reacted to the investigations of public prosecutors and judges with terror attacks.
With the resolution of the East-West conflict, the scenario of a worldwide war between the superpowers was averted. The current global conflicts are no longer between the armies of two nations with clearly defined fronts. Instead civil wars and terrorism have increasingly come to define modern conflict. Today’s issue is how to be effective in new styles of combat. When the Christian West is trying to portray the Islamic East as terrorists, they must realize that for all the horrific acts of terror committed in the world in the past, it is the Christian West which is to blame .It is largely because of their imperialistic policies that the world is now confronted with 60 million displaced people, at least ninety percent of whom are Muslims.
Although France granted independence to its former protectorates Morocco and Tunisia in1956, the Algerian War took an extremely destructive form between 1954 and 1962and it was tied to political crisis in France. The Algerian government’s socialist state course and an western backed army coup in 1962 resulted in a brutal civil war in which more than two hundred thousand people were killed. All the three countries with cities characterized by their French colonial history are subject to internal clashes between religious and social traditions and a forced westernization of lifestyles which is resulting in massive discrepancies between urban and rural regions. In Morocco and Tunisia, governments steered an authoritarian course of modernization and waged a war against opposition Islamist groups. Islamic zealots , on the other hand , propagated a return to the traditional values of Islam emphasizing their cultural superiority .
The Islamic concept of social justice, equality, tolerance, and compassion remained in the forefront of the Muslims for over a millennium when great empires like the Turkish Empire and the Mughal Empire were built following the excellent pattern provided in the Quran: “And let there be from you a nation inviting to good, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, and those will be successful.” Wherever the Muslims went they were visionary lawgivers, patrons of arts, letters and sciences and architects of enduring empires. Without the Islamic civilization which spread its wings over Europe from Spain during 800 years of Muslim rule it is hard to imagine the western history working out the way as it did, for those were the roads that carried the outside ideas and transmitted scientific knowledge and technology westwards and opened up European minds to the vastness of the world.
The Authoritarian governments in Tunisia and Algeria denied the people their democratic right to elect their governments through election and led to an outright war between the vast majority of people who supported an Islamic way of life and secularists who used force to suppress the people’s voice.
The suppression and coercion of the autocratic regimes pushed the disgruntled Muslim factions into a violence that offends the basic tenets of Islam. An aggressive secularism forced the fundamentalists to fight for survival and because their backs were to the wall they had no other way but to fight their way out of the impasse. In this frame of mind some resorted to violence and committed acts of terror when the majority tried to establish their faith in a more conventional, lawful way. The reason why a Tunisian youth Mohamed Bouhlel drove a 20 ton lorry in a mile long rampage in Nice on the Bastille Day on 14 July, is embedded in the French colonial history itself. The French prime minister who was also booed during the memorial service rightly said, “France will have to live with terrorism.” France’s only escape from shipwreck lies in the integration of the immigrants coming from the former colonies on the basis of the Revolutionary motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity .”
( Writer was elected MP in the 7th and the 8th Parliaments)
