A French-Tunisian drove a lorry at high speed into a crowd celebrating the country’s national holiday, and enjoying the Bastille Day fireworks along the Promenade des Anglais seafront in French city of Nice, killing 84 people, injuring more than 100. Police shot and killed the driver. French President Francois Hollande in an address to the nation said, “Nothing will make us yield in our will to fight terrorism. We will further strengthen our actions in Iraq and in Syria. We will continue striking those who attack us on our own soil.” ISIS has claimed the responsibility for the attack, but investigations would confirm if it is true. There is a perception that the attack was the blowback of the role of the US supported by France and the United Kingdom in destabilising countries in the name of bringing about democracy in African and Arab countries.
After the attack on a magazine in Paris on 7th January 2015, former US congressman Ron Paul had said that the shooting attack in Paris was the direct result of interventionist policies of the western countries, including France. In an interview with NewsMax, Paul had condemned the attack on the magazine that left 12 people dead. He explained that the French government’s policies to intervene in the affairs of other countries like Libya and earlier Algeria caused these kinds of attacks. Since the crisis emerged in Syria, France had taken a clear position of supporting rebels of Bashar al-Assad’s government. In 2012, the United Kingdom also joined hands with France to create a unified opposition. Rebels had blamed the country’s leader and his forces for killing scores of innocent people, including entire families. On the other hand, Assad blamed the violence on terrorists.
In November 2012, the then British foreign secretary William Hague had told members of parliament that the National Coalition of the Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces was the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people, calling it a credible alternative to Assad. French President Hollande had announced that it would support the new coalition, and would even consider arming the opposition to hasten the end of the war. This decision had annoyed, rather provoked, the supporters of Assad government in particular, and Muslims in general. However, America had refused to provide air cover to the Syrian opposition fighters because of the ISIS factor, which had benefited most from the ongoing war between the Assad forces and opposition forces by dominating the scene. It was in this backdrop that France had to review its policy.
For some time, France and the UK have been conducting air strikes on ISIS territory, but despite ISIS’ claim one would not know if the attacker actually had an IS connection. The question, however, is why the attacker chose the day of July 14, 1789 when Bastille fell before the onslaught of the enraged people of Paris, who with Promethean zeal broke the chains of feudalism and despotism, which for centuries had held the European people in thralldom. At the time of the French Revolution in 1789, France practised feudalism; the nobles and the clergy enjoyed special privileges, and were not obliged to pay taxes. France’s economy was in dire straits, and it was difficult for the majority of the people to keep their body and soul together. The common people hated the privileged classes and were revengeful. Secondly, the ideas and writings of Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau had inspired the people of France to go against their king.
The hungry Parisians who suffered from a bad harvest attacked the Bastille prison to free the political prisoners. In 1789, the French Revolution overthrew the monarchy and absolutism. The concept of modern democracy owed its origin to French Revolution, which was in fact a capitalists’ revolution against feudalists. In 1776, more than a decade before the French Revolution there was the American Revolution — the change from the condition of British colonies to national independence declared by the 13 states of the American Union. The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence started with these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words had a profound influence over the French, and people throughout the world. However, most US presidents negated the principles upheld by the founding fathers.
In 1917, the world witnessed the October Revolution under the leadership of the Communist Party, which replaced the monarchy and the economic system in Russia. Scared of the revolution in Russia, European countries introduced reforms in their societies by adopting reasonable wage structure, and providing social security to the workers. By pursuing pro-labour and pro-people policies, they were able to create balance in their societies and avert a bloody revolution. After World War II, Britain and France were so devastated that it was not possible for them to administer colonies, especially for Britain to control the Indian subcontinent. Many colonies gained independence, but the big powers continued to exploit their resources under neocolonialism. During the Cold War era, the world was divided into two camps, one headed by the US and other one by the former USSR, and the Soviet Union supported the movements for independence of the colonies.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Samuel P Huntington’s article titled “Clash of Civilisations” was published in the journal Foreign Affairs in the summer of 1993, which formed a series of attitudes opposing Islam. Given its intellectual and doctrinal nature, it had the greatest negative impact on the governments and the peoples of the western countries. He wrote: “The fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not primarily be ideological or economic… The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating the civilisations from one another.” Why this academic laboratory theory came after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War? They were trying to create a myth of a new threat, which they found in “militant Islam,” but efforts were made to malign the entire Muslim world for the acts of a few hundred misguided Muslims.
The writer is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at [email protected]