errorists struck in France again last Thursday, the third time in two months.
The US, France and the UK have spent billions of dollars since George W. Bush declared his so-called ‘War on Terror’ in the aftermath of the bombing of the World Trade Centre on September 11. In truth, another term for militant Islamists, who have taken up arms to rid their counties of foreign domination and the killing of innocent civilians?
The Bush-Blair adventure in Iraq -- based on non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction -- led to the destruction of one of the world’s most ancient civilizations, destroyed the infrastructure of the country’s health services which in turn led to deaths of undocumented numbers of children and the aged. The Western powers have launched thousands of air strikes, bombed oil facilities, deployed their military might, blocked money transfers and made scores of arrests in a bid to counter groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS).
But the two groups keep rising out of the ashes, so-to-say, with spectacular attacks on what are referred to as soft targets -- civilians; acts which should in fact be condemned. Unfortunately, these actions which strike terror and inflict death and destruction to innocent bystanders are drawing many more supporters to the cause of the perpetrators of terror.
To make matters worse, the Western countries continue to intervene in the internal affairs of all Islamic countries ranging from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Libya to Syria, Iran to Palestine… either intervening to uphold oppressive regimes or impose dictatorial regimes supportive of Western interests at the expense of the people of these countries. While al-Qaeda grew out of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (the group being armed and trained by the US itself), the Islamic State grew out of the US/British invasion and destruction of Iraq.
Subsequent involvement in regime change attempts in Syria, Libya, the overthrow of the elected government in Egypt and its replacement with a pro-West dictatorship, unfortunately give these actions a colouring of a Christian vs Islamic conflict.
Aerial bombardments, the use of drone strikes and heavy weapons by the West in Islamic countries leave in its wake hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, which are NOT covered by the mainstream media. These actions too, leave in their wake hundreds, if not thousands of civilian casualties and are no different to the actions of a single terrorist or terrorist group. While one is State-sponsored terrorism bereft of media coverage, individual terrorist actions or that of a terror group is hyped up in the media in all its gory detail.
The mass killing in Islamic countries in addition to spawning terror groups has also spawned a mass migration from the Middle Eastern countries to the West and resulted in hundreds of thousands attempting to escape the death and destruction overtaking their war-affected countries. Among the desperate people crossing into Europe today are ‘sleepers’ sent in by terror organisations with the specific intention of creating maximum mayhem in the host countries.
The perpetrators behind last Thursday’s horrendous massacre in Nice, France still remains uncertain, but bear the hallmarks of the ISIS. It had in fact called for such ‘lone wolf’ attacks. We in Sri Lanka, are no strangers to terrorism. We too were subject to the terrorism of the LTTE, which like its present day counterpart, the ISIS, massacred all those who did not support its cause.
The great democrats of yester-year - the Western countries, called for restraint on the part of all Sri Lankan Governments. Civilian deaths in the civil war have been termed ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ and the country has been indicted by the UN High Commission on Human Rights. Fortunately, Sri Lanka was spared of direct intervention from Western countries, who limited themselves to ‘demanding every Sri Lankan Government to abhor armed attacks and look to settle the causes which spawned terroristic responses from an oppressed people’. Counter-terrorist measures brought about the end of the near three-decade-long conflict.
Had Mahinda Rajapaksa not vanquished Velupillai Prabhakaran and LTTE terrorism from the island in the final bloody battle on the isthmus of Nanthikkadal in May 2009, Sri Lanka too, would most probably, be still in the grips of terrorism. Can we differentiate between the gruesome killing by a lone terrorist and a drone-strike ordered by the President of the US? Or the use of human shields by the LTTE, and the killing of civilians by the Sri Lanka Government in the final days of the civil war?
War is about KILLING, there are no good wars or bad wars. War is about KILLING, deprivation, abuse and a loss of morality.
