Understanding The Reality Behind The Paris Attack
By Sachinderpal Pali
24 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org
Recently ISIS has done a brutal attack on the people of France (Paris). This attack is a dark spot on the face of humanity. I condemn this shameful act of ISIS. When we talk about the condemnation of this attack then we must condemn the all kinds of religious fundamentalism all over the world whether they are in Islam, Christianity, Sikhism or Hinduism. This kinds of attacks also raises some questions in our mind that why all this happen?
If we would trace the history of western supremacy then we must not forget the history of imperialism, which is the main culprit behind all these kinds of attacks. The genocide of humanity was also done by the western countries (imperialism) whenever they invades in the third world countries for the exploitation of their natural resources. Various wars and attacks were waged against the people of the third world countries (TWC’s). For example, According to Guenter Lewy’s estimation, in 1978 total deaths were 1313000 in North and Southern Vietnam during the 1965-1974 period in which the US was most engaged in the Vietnam war. (1) And an another data said that Vietnamese military and civilian deaths ranged from 1.5 million to 3.8 million, with the US led campaign in Cambodia resulting in 600000 to 800000 deaths, and Laotian war mortality estimated at about 1 million.(2) After the 9/11 attacks; a later study, published in 2011, estimated that approximately 500000 Iraqis had died as a result of the conflict since the US invasion in Iraq. (3) An analytically conservative Council on Foreign relations assesses that 500 drone strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan have killed 3,674 people.(4)
On such study was published in ‘The Lancet’ in 2006, established not without controversy, more than 600000 “excess deaths” resulting from the US war and occupation. (5) The Asia foundations’ survey said that more than 6 million people –personally experienced some kind of crime or violence in their household in 2011. Of those, 8% (about 500000 people ) reported having suffered violence at the hands of “foreign forces” – i.e, ISAF.and these figures are just a one-year snapshot, now multiply it with 14 years of war.(5) You know one thing that there was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq until US and Britain invasion.(4)
In just 50 days, 2192 innocent people were killed, 513 children and 11100 were wounded, more than 12000 homes were destroyed in GAZA strip of Palestine by the Israeli forces, all of you very well know that Israel is the right hand of US in his all bad deedings.(6) The situation in Yemen is also very much serious where 4500 people were killed in just 150 days by the Saudi led bombings. This is also the US backed coalition of Middle Eastern nations (7) Till 24 November 2014, the attempts to kill the targeted 41 men take the lives of 1147 innocent people by the US drone attacks in Pakistan only. In an another data while specifically targeting the 24 men resulted in 874 innocent killings in Pakistan, which include 142 children. In Yemen, to kill 17 men 273 innocent people were killed by the drone attacks. This data is just a fraction of the actual killings.(8) But still Barack Obama called it the targeted killings, however we can estimate that how many civilians were killed by these ‘targeted killing’ drones. All this is what western countries are doing in the third world countries just to serve their own interests. And what the intelligence agencies [CIA (USA), MOSAD (Israel), MI6 (UK), FSB (Russia), BND (Germany), DGSE (France)... ) of the west are doing in the third world. And now Russian president Putin also said that ISIS is being financed from 40 countries including G-20 members.(9)
But the question is that during those wars why the national and international media was silent? We can easily see this during the Vietnam war, Afghanistan war, Iraq war, Palestine war (which is still going on) etc.
The biased role of media is also under question in all the shameful acts. And why the media was/is silent during these attacks ? But why there is partiality in supporting and not supporting the different attacks? Its answer lies in the answer of the question that who own the media ? The answer is simple that the big corporates; which are always biased in showing these kinds of news.
One more thing is important that there is also a class nature of different attacks. The normal people generally believe in their governments blind fully. That’s why the government justifies its each and every violent act against its people (who are fighting for their basic rights) through various means. These means are the different sources of propaganda which could be TV, News channels, cultural activities, movies etc. Only the government justifies its attacks on people because the ruling class own the all means of propaganda. Every action faces an equal and even sometime more strong reaction. On the other hand when people fight back then the government uses different kinds of tags to demonize them. These tags could be ‘terrorists’, ‘anti-social elements’, ‘Khalistanis’, ‘separatists’, ‘Naxalites’ and ‘Maoists’ etc. And through these tags the government got the sympathy of normal people to further justify its state sponsored violence, to whom we usually don’t question. I am not justifying the cruel acts of ISIS types of organizations here, rather i want to understand the larger phenomena of these kinds of attacks. Any mother in the world doesn’t give birth to any ‘terrorist’; it is the socio - political and economic conditions of any rotten system which compel him to be a human like this. We need to question that atmosphere which compel the people to be like that and that atmosphere is wholly controlled by the governments. So the anti-people policies of the different governments compel the normal people to pick up arms. And we can also check that all the developed countries are the largest exporters of the arms. So all these wars also give them a lot of profits too, that is also a sound reason that they doesn’t want to stop these wars.
Likewise if we want to understand the same phenomena then we can understand the Indian atmosphere. Even in India various peoples' struggles are emerging against the government, like the struggle in Kashmir, north east and the struggle of tribal people in the middle India etc. But the Indian government doesn’t want to solve these socio- political- economic issues, rather the government want to eliminate those people who are fighting for their rights by blaming them under the above mentioned tags. In that case too, our PMO office strictly ordered to our media that you won’t show the news of the peoples’ struggles. Although the Indian army is killing hundreds of people in all these movement prone areas. Hundreds of adivasis have been daily killed under the Operation Green Hunt and hundreds of Kashmiri people have been killed under AFSPA kinds of black laws. But no media is showing the news of those killings, sometimes the small news come to our notice due to the efforts of some pro-people journalists. The government doesn’t make different black laws for the security of the people rather these laws are made to tackle the different peoples’ movements. The government have introduced the UAPA, AFSPA, TADA, POTA, etc laws to arrest and kill the struggling people without any evidence. And there is a long history of different governments that their intelligence agencies himself involved in organizing the attacks on people so that the governments can justified these laws in the public.
Let us understand the ISIS phenomena briefly. Taliban and ISIS were created through the imperialists’ agendas. Taliban was created during the cold war period when USA want to stop the Russia. So it gives the arms to the orthodox people of Afghanistan to stop Russia. But as we all know that no one can control the objective realities, so during the Russian’s invasion in Afghanistan these Talibani groups were involved in the war against Russia. But they didn’t stop there, and now we see their new face in the current scenario. Same is the case of ISIS. ISIS was a very small group which left Al-Qaeda. But in Syria there is the government of Bashar al-Assad, which has close relations with Russia. And there is also the oil issue in Syria. USA want to form a new government in Syria (which would be pro USA) for both the natural resources (oil) as well as for the Geo-political reasons. Geo-political reasons mean that they want to do the encircled Russia which is the second imperialist power in the world. So USA supported the small group of Al-Qaeda to over through the Assad’s government which latterly emerged into ISIS.
We need to look into each and every matter very carefully. We should try hard to investigate the truth behind the various attacks. There are many documents which say that the 9/11 attacks on the world trade centre’s were organized by USA government itself to blame the Muslim orthodoxy and to invade in Iraq for the oil reserves. What France and US is doing under the name of war against the ISIS also led to the so many killings of the civilians. This is the attack on innocent people and what ISIS is doing is also the attack on innocent people. We need to condemn the both types of killings.
There are various forms of struggles, but i won’t support this heinous form of struggle which led to the killing of innocent people. It is heinous, shameful, cruel and brutal and it need to be condemned in every aspect. The peoples’ struggle should be against the anti-people governments (especially the corporates which run these governments) but not against the people itself. Rather this kind of shameful act will compel the governments to led further attack on Islamic people in the developed countries and as well as general people in the third world countries and it will create more Islamophobia in the world again. Let expose and fight against the these both types of attacks whether they are done by the religious orthodox people or done by the imperialists and anti-people governments.
Sachinderpal Pali is a social activist in Chandigarh and working on the housing rights of the slum dwellers.
References:
3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
4. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq
5. http://www.thenation.com/article/americas-afghan-victims/
7. http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/killed-saudi-bombing
8. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147?CMP=share_btn_fb
9. https://www.rt.com/news/322305-isis-financed-40-countries/