INTO THE BLACK HOLE.

 

It is understandable that when our stricken ally, France, calls for our help, that the Prime Minister wants to respond. It is also understandable that when the crimes of Daesh are carried out on the streets of Paris, Beirut and elsewhere that we want to lash out.

Although understandable we should not think that our joining in the bombing of Daesh in Syria will bring peace any nearer. We would be better concentrating on stopping the financing of Daesh, stopping or countering its poisonous message on the internet. Then there is Daesh’s oil sales with rumours that Turkey is a customer. If true we cannot take seriously Ankara’s desire to be a member of the EU.

Turkey isn’t the only big power with a complex agenda in the Syrian crisis. David Cameron has failed to give an answer to these complexities and therefore cannot claim to have a long term strategy. He refers to talks in Vienna but look at the agendas countries will bring to the table. Russia is currently committed to propping up Bashar al-Assad, the leader of Syria. There is talk that President Putin will look for a more acceptable alternative. There is little sign of it. Russia wants to send out a message to the world that it supports its friends. The retention of Assad, even in the short term is totally unacceptable to the “seventy thousand” armed opponents that David Cameron thinks are going to abandon fighting Assad to fight Daesh.

This is a major flaw in Cameron’s strategy. There is no prospect of any nation or group of nations putting enough effective boots on the ground to conduct a land war and conquer Daesh’s headquarters in Raqqa. The West doesn’t want to get burned again and most of the Arab armies are understandably terrified of Daesh brutality. Most Arab countries are not even conducting air strikes. Their rivalries and interests are too complex for them to become effectively involved it seems.

So what is going to happen? I called this blog “Into The Black Hole”, because that is where we are headed I fear. We will join France and the USA in bombing Daesh targets. The terrorists will get a propaganda boost from it. Sooner or later they will commit a major atrocity on British streets and what will we do then with our “no boots on the ground” policy?

There should be a solution to such terrible wars, the United Nations. Soon after it was first set up, the Korean War was ended by UN action. It has passed a resolution calling for military action against Daesh now but there is no UN army or the sort of leadership of a group of armies that prevailed in Korea. The UN is hobbled by lack of funding and often the self interested vetos of members of the Security Council.

Syria is a lethal cocktail of violence, frustration, big power self interest and regional rivalry. I wish I could see a way out of the black hole but I can’t at the moment.

A VORTEX OF VIOLENCE OR LONG TERM REMEDIES

 

We may have to live with terrorism for generations but there are things that can be done to try and avoid us getting into the vortex of violence that the Parisian madmen want us to descend into.

It is not in any way to give a scintilla of justification to what happened in Paris to suggest that the massacre has historic links to Britain and France’s colonial past. History is a rolling story with one event linked to another. In the 1920s our two countries carved up the Middle East with no regard to the local Arab interest. Britain promised a homeland for the Jews whilst promising to protect the interests of the Palestinian Arabs.

When the colonial era ended and the Arabs became responsible for governing the Middle East themselves we saw the setting up of military dictatorships and even more significantly the hoarding of the vast oil wealth of the region in the hands of a few. If that money had been fairly distributed across the region, it might now have been an area of prosperity. Instead unemployment and instability has created a sense of anger and hopelessness on which terrorism has fed.

The last chapter of the recent history of the Middle East saw the western powers returning to remove the military dictators who’s only virtue was to keep a lid on the festering divisions. Following the removal of Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein all hell has broken loose. I’m not a spokesman for the Stop The War coalition who issued a tweet (subsequently repudiated) saying we were reaping the whirlwind, however it is true. But “we” includes not just western countries who made bad choices in the Middle East, but greedy oil sheiks and religious fanatics who ought to know that the true basis of both Christianity and Islam is to love thy neighbour and do good.

So what is to be done now? In the short term ISIL’s territory has to be conquered by local troops backed up by western air support. But that won’t be the end of them, there a re plenty of failed states where they will emerge again unless fundamental issues are resolved in the region. The most important is better wealth distribution. Then comes some really controversial changes. The creation of Palestine and Kurdistan (the least they deserve for being the only effective troops fighting ISIS) as nation states and possible boundary changes to ease Sunni and Shia tensions.

At home a massive “not in my name” demonstration by our British Muslim colleagues would help ease the worrying rise of entirely unjustified Islamaphobia. The Chancellor next week should protect funds for community policing. It is the height of folly to damage that part of the police service which is often the first to detect extremists. And finally the Prime Minister needs to be careful to avoid gloating when we, sometimes necessarily, execute terrorists without trial. His demeanour in announcing the death of Jihaddi John was in marked contrast to the remarks of some of the people who’d actually had relatives beheaded by the ghastly murderer.

By language and deed we must not be goaded into the vortex of violence.

 

JE SUIS CHARLIE,BUT…..

..

 

The crazy logic of the people who gunned down the staff of Charlie Hebdo is that it will bring nearer the day of a holy war between the West and the Caliphate.

As the shock and grief continues, we have to ask ourselves if that day is getting nearer.

 

It seems unbelievable in this hi tech 21st century world that I should be writing in language more appropriate to the age of the Crusades or the sixteenth century when the Ottoman Empire was at the gates of Vienna. More poignantly we can go back to 732 when the Umayyed Caliphate nearly took Poitiers in the centre of France during the incredible early expansion of Islam.

 

At the moment the conflict does not take the form of armies confronting each other. The British and American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has ended that for now. We prefer drones, air strikes and arming the Kurds to boots on the ground.

 

The dreadful events in France have left us in a very dangerous position. Islamophobia and anti semitism are on the rise, our civil liberties are under pressure, and parties of the right are gaining support. Meanwhile the causes of all this are hardly mentioned.

They are in no particular order, the post World War One colonial settlement in the Middle East; the grossly unfair distribution of oil wealth that should have benefited all the people of the region; our ignorance of the complexities of the Middle East when we intervened militarily; the mindset of some Muslims that their religion and way of life should be imposed on all of us and above all our failure to deal with the plight of the Palestinians. Barrack Osama should use the remaining years of his presidency, when he is less beholden to the powerful Jewish lobby in America, to achieve a two state solution for Israel and Palestine.

 

Of course that is very difficult to achieve, but it could be the beginning of unwinding the mounting crisis between the West and elements of Islam. If the terrorists could no longer point to the plight of the Palestinians, then one of the major causes of tension would be ameliorated. This might then lead to a waning of real and tacit support for terrorism upon which organisations like ISIS and Al -Qaeda rely.

 

Finally let me go back to the title of this blog and my thoughts on publications like Charlie Hebdo. Whilst we must all defend free speech, we must recognise that it is not absolute in France or here. There are laws curbing racial hatred and obscenity. Much more widely people of a religious belief are entitled to be offended and angered by blatant mockery of Muhammed or Jesus. Emphatically it does not entitle them to kill or intimidate those that publish such material, but we must acknowledge its effect on the heightened tension we are all feeling.