Diana Moukalled: Paris attacks: Our victims, and their victims/Jamal Khashoggi: Europe is scared, and so are we/Dr. John C. Hulsman: France’s doomed efforts to take the fight to ISIS

Paris attacks: Our victims, and their victims
Diana Moukalled/Al Arabiya/November/15

A Twitter user recently sent me a message criticizing my grief over the victims of the recent Paris attacks. He wrote: “These are infidels who we do not pray for to rest in peace regardless of whether it’s permissible to kill them or not.” Of course, I did not feel any desire to engage in a discussion with him or to respond to such logic. Unfortunately, this logic has been manifested in many reactions around us and has reflected confusion regarding shifts in emotions and sympathy based on countries, religion, sect and race. The situation certainly seems disappointing, especially when we feel surrounded by all this pain and bloodshed in the region to the extent where we’ve become deprived of basic primitive feelings, such as rejecting the murder of civilians even at a time when many civilians from our own countries often become murder victims.
The belief is, those who are slain overseas are not our victims, and those who are slain here are not their victims.Barely anyone was spared from being criticized for voicing solidarity with the victims of the terrorist attacks committed by ISIS. Most people took to social media and posted comments, images and flags of the countries targeted by ISIS in order to condemn all their attacks, particularly the Paris attacks. Facebook introduced a tool to add the French flag filter to profile photos, and many users used that tool to voice solidarity with the victims. However many were angered and confused by this move. Some created a similar tool to include the Lebanese flag filter and criticized how France received more global solidarity than Beirut, which had witnessed ISIS suicide bombings a day before the Paris attacks.
Then, the series of bids for solidarity escalated.
The Paris attacks were met with campaigns of solidarity and grief in western countries. However in our Arab world, they mainly stood out as points of controversy and dispute – which seem to be the only thing we are good at. Sympathy among us seemed to be conditional and many well-known media outlets were at some point directly involved in reinforcing these reservations, by adopting a malicious approach towards the event, its victims and perpetrators. Since absurdity has no limits, many fell into the trap of circulating the news of the murder of 147 students in Kenya and commented on the news with a demand that those sympathizing with the Paris attacks not to ignore Africa. Of course, it was clear that those who circulated this news on Kenya did not double check their information as the news had happened seven months ago. Unfortunately, only a few people bother to double check information amid this social media storm. Perhaps those who are concerned the most here are the Syrians, who cannot feel that any pain matches theirs, and the Lebanese people who’ve become used to explosions. The Iraqis have also gotten used to bombings for over a decade now. Meanwhile the Yemenis struggle to end the negligence towards their victims. Of course we’re not placing all these groups in one category according to identity or nationality. However there’s certainly a frantic state of dispute regarding reactions to their crises. This implies we have not learned much from the abundant death tolls which have exhausted us as countries, individuals and societies. The belief is, those who are slain overseas are not our victims, and those who are slain here are not their victims. We are incapable of agreeing that a victim is a victim regardless of his/her nationality. Within our bias towards those victims is our declaration that their murderer is one and that we, too, are his victims.

Europe is scared, and so are we
Jamal Khashoggi/Al Arabiya/November/15

Europe is scared, worried, apprehensive and looking for a solution to its crisis with ISIS which can strike anywhere. And we are also worried and scared. For as much as ISIS poses a threat to Europe and the world, it threatens us too. Just like its moral sense has completely collapsed and it has started attacking soft targets that are impossible to protect around the clock, it is doing the same thing in our world and attacking mosques. Just as it targeted civilians in Stade De France because they voted for their government and are hence partners with it in the war, it would target civilians in Jawharah Stadium because the Saudi people support their government against ISIS. It is the same logic and it is just a matter of time. To have access to weapons and explosives and to manage to be overlooked by security; once these two conditions are met, the bombing will happen.
ISIS is not Baghdadi
Yet while Europe fears only ISIS, we fear – along with it – that the state of chaos and collapse that our world is experiencing will reach us. Our victims in the Middle East are greater in number. We can draw many pictures with their images just like the French media did with the images of the Paris attack’s victims. Our victims are more; their murderers more diverse – not just ISIS. They also include the oppressive regimes whom ISIS claims it has come out to avenge. The endless list of our victims stirs in us a fear of the future, but this fear is a fuel for the extremists among us who use it to recruit new supporters under the banner of revenge.
ISIS is not Baghdadi. They have a good stock of bearded men who memorize a few Quranic verses and Prophetic sayings and are ready to climb the podium and declare themselves the Caliph of the Caliph. This is why there has to be a European alliance with the countries of the region not only for the war on ISIS but also for the war on the prevailing state of chaos which will continue to secrete more ISIS unless we stop it. But Europe, particularly French President François Holland, is still focused on the direct apparent enemy, ISIS – headquartered in Raqqa and cells spread around Europe, and wishes that the U.S. and Russia would put aside their disagreements and unite to face the organization. It is clear that under the shock of the attacks, President François is leaning towards adopting the Russian interpretation of the crisis: “fight ISIS”, and this is why there is a need for a different approach that is broader and more comprehensive. One that aims to fight the causes that produced ISIS in the Middle East and not just an extremist speech that can be handled by eliminating a school curriculum, preventing a “scholar” from visiting France or even by a raid that destroys the “Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. There is no doubt that the latter would make amazing headlines for a French newspaper, followed by a speech in which Hollande – waving his hands – says, “we won.” But ISIS is not Baghdadi. They have a good stock of bearded men who memorize a few Quranic verses and Prophetic sayings and are ready to climb the podium and declare themselves the Caliph of the Caliph.
ISIS is the state of chaos, failure and political and social collapse that the Middle East is experiencing extending as far west as Libya. It is the regime of Bashar al-Assad who has been killing his own people for four years and whom Hollande has declared, on more than one occasion, to have lost his legitimacy but did nothing to stop him. It is the regime’s explosive tanks that are falling on the Syrians in their markets and destroyed neighborhoods. It is the sectarian militia from outside Syria that came to fight sons of the majority who are rejecting the rule of the minority. It is Iraq’s Sunnis who fear that Baghdad’s sectarian government and its extremist crowd will expand, control their areas, humiliate them and attack them. It is the prisons that contain tens of thousands of detainees. It is the abolition of civil rights. It is the shooting of the peaceful demonstrators. It is the deceit of the media that converts the judiciary system from a refuge for the oppressed to a tool for tyranny and oppression. In short, it is the confiscation of the hopes of the Arab people that arose in the Arab Spring four years ago wanting democracy, justice and decent living. Yes, ISIS does not want democracy nor freedom, but it is the only alternative for some angry men seeking “good governance” and who imagine it to exist in ISIS after they were denied all other alternatives and had their options limited to tyranny, detention, immigration to Europe on a death boat or ISIS – which doesn’t deserve to be an option for an Arab Muslim. It is an abhorrent idea that will remain with us in its different “Salafist Jihadi” forms but must not spread with this force nor enjoy all this gravity which is only happening due to the state of chaos and descent of our world.
Terrorists and refugees
Europe made the modern Middle East – which is now crumbling – a hundred years ago. It is time for it to go back to it and collaborate with the powers that are in a position to fix it, not because it is responsible for it which is no longer the case and no one wants a return of the twentieth century imperialist, but because the Middle East is the one that is turning to it in two forms it does not desire: terrorists and refugees. There are two powers in the Levant that are capable of the required comprehensive reform: Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But they are suffering from “American hesitation” just like Europe. Forming an alliance between these three powers can guarantee ending the American hesitation and bringing the U.S. to a global plan to eradicate ISIS – one that starts with an accurate reading of history and is based on respecting the people’s desire for freedom, security and political participation. This will entail ceasing to protect a minority oppressive regime like that of Bashar Al-Assad and helping the Syrian people in forming a national government whose men will be the power needed to destroy ISIS on the Syrian territory without the need to send French or European soldiers to the Syrian lands against their wish. It will also save France the cost of air raids on ISIS’s fortress which will not terminate it but could rather kill innocent victims whose tragedy will be used by ISIS to fuel another cycle of violence in the streets of Paris. Saudi Arabia has called for democratic secular ruling and elections in Syria which seems strange to some since Saudi, from their point of view, is neither democratic nor secular. However, the problem is not in Saudi Arabia but in Syria. The Kingdom realizes that a pluralistic country whose people have revolted for freedom will not accept a Salafist Islamic government which some groups are calling for there, nor will the people accept a minority oppressive ruling. Both are recipes for a state of instability as the rest of the components of the population will reject this narrow factional vision. The solution is in a pluralistic democratic government which everyone can find a place in. Syria and the rest of the Levant deserve better alternatives than Bashar and ISIS. Europeans must realize that their and our real enemy is not ISIS but the state of chaos and breakdown in the Levant.

France’s doomed efforts to take the fight to ISIS
Dr. John C. Hulsman/Al Arabiya/November/15

French President Francois Hollande’s shaky term in office has been characterized by economic cluelessness and the country’s diminution in power, certainly compared with neighboring Germany. However, following the Paris attacks that killed 129 people, he unexpectedly found his voice.Despite his obvious desolation as to what had just happened to his people, Hollande bravely made clear that France would honor its commitment to take in 30,000 refugees, stressing that they were victims of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rather than its members. He also said his country would fight back against barbarism, and that the French way of life would prevail. This was stirring stuff, but can France, as Hollande promised, take the war to ISIS? If his rhetoric and resilience seemed new, his policy approach to the Syrian crisis remains all too formulaic. It is a prime example of atrophied Cold War thinking that Hollande’s first instincts were to marshal great powers from outside the Middle East – Russia and the United States – as the key components of his hoped-for coalition against ISIS, rather than regional and local forces. Without local leadership, success is highly unlikely.
Reasons for failure
There are four reasons Hollande’s policy approach is doomed to fail. First, without local legitimacy in taking on ISIS, outside powers must commit to a long-term military and political occupation. Neither an economically hard-pressed Moscow nor an obviously skittish Washington has the wherewithal or the stomach for another open-ended commitment in the Middle East. By allying itself so publicly with Moscow – a close ally of Shiite Tehran and Damascus – France’s hoped-for alliance will alienate the Sunni majority in Syria. Second, great-power involvement is not what it used to be. After the Paris attacks, Washington and Moscow committed to redouble their efforts against ISIS, including restarting bilateral talks over Syria. Both ruled out the use of ground troops in the country, but without infantry it will be impossible to eradicate the group. As U.S. airstrikes in Iraq have made clear, air power can stem ISIS’s advance, but only boots on the ground will allow the tide to be turned. If neither France, the United States or Russia are prepared to put infantry in Syria and Iraq, the new grand coalition is just the same hollow shell as the old anti-ISIS configurations.
Third, each Western great power lacks a strategic component. France, given its limited resources, cannot fight ISIS on its own. From Paris’s perspective, Russia is fighting the wrong people, overwhelmingly focusing on preserving the Syrian regime by bombing anti-ISIS rebels. The White House seems to want to fight as few people as possible, spending most of its energies avoiding being sucked into an open-ended morass in Syria. These three glaring strategic weaknesses call into question the effectiveness of France’s coalition even before it is formed. Finally, by latching onto Russia as the key lynchpin of its new anti-ISIS strategy, Paris may be forestalling the one possible coalition that may actually have the local legitimacy and wherewithal to destroy ISIS. By allying itself so publicly with Moscow – a close ally of Shiite Tehran and Damascus – France’s hoped-for alliance will alienate the Sunni majority in Syria, which looks to regional powers Turkey and Saudi Arabia. If the West is seen as decisively turning to the Shiite pole of power in the Middle East – at the expense of the majority Sunnis – even if ISIS is somehow eradicated, Sunni restiveness in Syria and Iraq is bound to flare up again, fuelled by the West’s short-sighted sectarian choice. Only a West allied with regional Sunni powers – Turkey and the Gulf states, endowed with local legitimacy and able to put boots on the ground – can form a coalition capable of fighting ISIS and, critically, winning the peace afterward. Hollande’s depressing reversion to the usual Western patterns will not stop the cancer that is ISIS.