Paris at Midnight

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

14 November 15

aris was hit by at least two well-trained and -equipped terrorist cells in a coordinated attack on 6 or 7 soft targets on Friday night. The attack that took the most lives, over 120 according to a high French official, was the assault on the audience for a musical performance by the Eagles of Death Metal (not actually a death metal band) at the Bataclan concert hall. Four assailants shot down audience members with machine guns, then when police went in after midnight, three detonated their suicide bomb belts. A fourth was shot dead, but then when he fell, his bomb went off anyway. But the cowards also shot up a Cambodian restaurant, set off bombs outside a soccer stadium and committed carnage elsewhere.

Regular readers know that I grew up in part in France; I had a fellowship at the Nouvelle Sorbonne a couple of years ago in Paris, a city I absolutely adore, and this news hit me viscerally. I can only express my support and profound solidarity with the brave Parisians.

A radio and television professional who was at the Bataclan and survived reported “I clearly heard them say to the hostages, ‘It is [President Francois] Hollande’s fault, it is the fault of your president, he should not have intervened in Syria.’ They also spoke of Iraq.”

If this report is accurate, then the attackers were likely members of, or sympathizers with Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), which holds territory in Syria and Iraq, and against which France began flying missions in September. Another possible culprit is core al-Qaeda or one of its affiliates, such as the Support Front (al-Jabha al-Nusra) in Syria. The Support Front does not, however, have territory in Iraq, and France has not specifically targeted it in the west of Syria, as opposed to hitting ISIL in the east.

When I was in France in mid-October, I was told by a former diplomat that President Hollande had decided to begin flying missions against ISIL in Raqqa, Syria, last September because French intelligence had learned that ISIL was planning to hit France. It is estimated that there are some 3,000 radical French Muslims fighting in ISIL (though remember that this number is proportionally tiny, since there are on the order of 3 million French Muslims, some 5% of the population– and the majority of them is not religious).

This operation may, then, have been planned even before France was militarily involved in the campaign against ISIL in Syria, and the terrorists’ assertion that it was revenge for that intervention of the past two months has things backward.

The French air force has been inflicting substantial damage on ISIL in Raqqa and its hinterlands. On Tuesday, AFP reported that France launched a fourth wave of airstrikes on Daesh targets in Syria, targeting the oil infrastructure that is a source of much of ISIL’s budget.

But AFP says, “The two previous waves targeted training camps for foreign jihadists who were suspected of preparing attacks in France. Hollande said on Thursday last week operations would be expanded to include “all those sites from which terrorists could threaten our territory”. The president also said France would deploy its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier — the flagship of the French navy — to boost operations against IS in Syria and Iraq.”

So France tried to forestall an attack on French soil by ISIL from last September by disrupting its training camps and hoping to disrupt the planning and logistics. But if the plot were more advanced than French intelligence knew, and ISIL operatives were already in France and gathering up the arms, bombs and ammunition they needed for a terrorist strike, then bombing training camps in Syria would only have stiffened the terrorists’ resolve.

I underline that we don’t know who exactly ordered and carried out Friday’s attack. But the circumstantial evidence is that it was the work of, at the least, sympathizers with Daesh.

Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had told AFP Tuesday that the French military had intensified its bombing campaign against ISIL oil infrastructure. Le Drian said, “We struck again twice last night in the Deir Ezzor region, firstly on an oil distribution station and secondly on a gas separation plant.”

President Hollande closed French land borders, declared a state of emergency, and deployed 1500 troops in the streets of Paris. Schools and universities will be closed on Saturday, and all school field trips have been canceled. The Schengen rules allow member countries, who had removed visa requirements for each other, to reimpose border controls across the board in an emergency.

Some fear that these strikes will spell the end of Schengen open borders and will negatively affect the refugees that have come to Europe in the thousands recently.

The terrorists may have been attempting to replicate the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which also aimed at soft targets, and which convinced Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Likely, however, the perpetrators have stiffened the resolve of the French government to intervene even more robustly against Daesh. In 2013, [pdf] France sent in an expeditionary force to Mali, and stabilized that country. France also intervened in the Ivory Coast. Will it send in an expeditionary force, say a brigade of 3,000 men, to Eastern Syria?

Islamic State Attacks Paris: Why the War on Terror Can't Work

By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News

14 November 15

riday night’s terror attacks at the Bataclan concert hall, a soccer stadium, and four other sites in Paris left no doubt. “What you are doing in Syria, you are going to pay for it now,” one of the black-clad gunmen shouted, according to a witness. “It’s the fault of Hollande, it’s the fault of your president, he should not have intervened in Syria,” another gunman shouted, according to French radio presenter Pierre Janaszak, who was at the Bataclan. They also spoke about Iraq, said Janaszak. “This is because of all the harm done by Hollande to Muslims all over the world,” another attacker yelled in French. 

Claiming responsibility online, the Islamic State spoke of “eight brothers wearing explosive belts and carrying assault rifles” conducting a “blessed attack” on “the Crusader France.” The attack, said the statement, was a response to France “striking Muslims in the caliphate with their aircraft” as part of the US-led coalition.

The Islamic State also distributed a video featuring French Muslims. “As long as you keep bombing you will not live in peace,” one of them threatened.  “You will even fear travelling to the market.”

As I write this, the death toll has reached “at least 127” with another 300 injured, 80 of them critically. The Hollande government has responded by declaring a nationwide state of emergency, giving the police and military greatly enhanced power to arrest anyone, control movement, and close down whole areas of the country. The government also banned all political protests until Thursday. The French Parliament gave the government many of these powers following the attack on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in January.

What does the Islamic State hope to achieve with this attack? Are they trying to convince the French to stop their bombing in Syria and Iraq? Or, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, are they trying to suck France and its allies into sending ground troops?

No one at this point can know for sure, and Islamic State could well be keeping its options open. But, as I’ve argued for over a year, their only chance of long-term success depends on convincing their fellow Sunni Muslims in Iraq, Syria, and beyond that they are defending Islam against foreign invaders. The more the US-led coalition bombs and the more the West becomes involved in ground wars, the more recruits Islamic State will find. Many of those recruits live in Europe and the United States.

How, then, should France and its allies respond? Certainly not by giving Islamic State the war they want and need. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney insisted on treating terrorism as a matter for war, and for the most point, the French government of Jacques Chirac refused to go along, preferring to treat terrorism as a matter for the police. The sooner we all turn away from the war on terror, the safer we will all be.

The next step would be to listen again to Chelsea Manning, the former army intelligence analyst now serving 35 years in military custody for WikiLeaking government secrets. “Let ISIS succeed in setting up a failed ‘state’ – in a contained area and over a long enough period of time to prove itself unpopular and unable to govern. This might begin to discredit the leadership and ideology of ISIS for good.”

At the same time, the CIA and its Saudi allies need to turn down the heat in Syria and stop supplying Sunni rebels with increasingly lethal weapons. According to BBC, these now include anti-tank weapons and could soon extend to surface-to-air missiles capable of bringing down commercial airlines.

Within France, the greatest danger is that the attack and government response will strengthen Marine Le Pen’s Front National, which is running in December’s regional elections against Muslims and migrants. “France isn’t safe anymore,” she proclaimed. “The night of horror continues.” She has symbolically suspended her campaign, but is running harder than ever, as the Socialist government appears to be using her playbook.

A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.