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    ISIS in Ireland and France

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    Not a season has passed since 2015 without a terrorist attack from ISIS or Al-Qaeda in France. Interventions in the Middle East, perceived discrimination against Arabs including ghettoisation and stringent or doctrinaire secularisation are the primary reasons for the attacks, though many have also been random, typically ‘franchised’ retrospectively from ISIS. Ireland is no model of racial tolerance and has not been generous in accepting refugees from conflicts in the Middle-East, including Syria. 1400 members of the Irish Defence Forces operate in Syria, Lebanon and Morocco on Peace Support Operations with the UN. Although Ireland has not participated in the war against terrorism in the Middle East, it is not impossible that one day it would suffer an attack. It is believed there are around 150 radicalised Muslims living in Ireland and that there are terrorists supporting ISIS financially from Ireland. For example, an electrician in his twenties named Hassan Bal was arrested in Waterford after confessing he had financed ISIS. He gave 400 in October 2015 in a city in Bosnia-Herzegovina to Stevo Maksimovic who was apparently supporting the terrorist group. Bal was jailed for 20 years. Last year, two men from Morocco and Algeria were arrested in Dublin suspected of assisting the financing of ISIS but the Garda didn’t have enough evidence to jail them and they were later released. It is understood the Garda Special Detective Unit was conducting several surveillance operations on people suspected of supporting terrorism in Ireland. Also in 2017, Humza Ali – a bricklayer from Birmingham – tried to travel to Syria via a Dublin-Istanbul flight. Turkey refused him entry. He went back to England where he had been before he had travelled to Ireland by boat and ferry. The man and one of his accomplices, Ali Akbar Zeb, had been sharing photos and videos on WhatsApp to promote the terrorist group. It is believed they were training for an attack. Last year, an Irish woman named ‘Sister Aaliya’, from Limerick who had become radicalised to Islam, claimed she had heard ISIS terrorists talking about running a 2.8m fund from Dublin. The men linked to this financing were planning a terrorist attack in the capital. Assistant Garda Commissioner Michael O’Sullivan revealed last month that the Garda has been ordered to use barriers on busy streets like Grafton Street in Dublin. He claimed to be worried about people coming back to Ireland after having travelled to Syria or Iraq in support of ISIS. Security specialist Dr Tom Clonan thinks terrorist attacks are possible in Ireland. He told Village that, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation in London, there were “40 Irish passport-holders who have gone to engage in jihad in the Middle-East”. The reason why Islamists do not attack on the soil of Ireland, he says, is because Muslims are integrated in this society. The Defence Forces are ready to deploy 500 soldiers if terrorists attack. However, civilians inevitably get killed before any police intervention. Even though France has long been on high alert, there are continuing fatalities. The state of Emergency declared there following the November 2015 Paris attacks only expired, after five extensions, in November 2017. In Ireland the state of emergency only expired after peace in Northern Ireland in 1995, and the Emergency Powers Act still allows internment, the juryless Special Criminal Court and draconian provisions for detention. However these are measures frmo a different era and with a different focus. It is believed our information technology and architecture; and our security and intelligence systems are over 20 years out of date. Two years ago, the association of Garda Sergeants said the Garda was not equipped or trained to deal with the terror threat here. The best way to avoid terrorism, according to Tom Clonan, is to stop interfering and bombing the Middle-East. “Muslims have been treated so badly since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the war in Syria. It is a major cause of radicalisation because people are suffering.” ISIS attacks are sadly frequent in France, the European focus for ISIS. 11 terrorist attacks, starting with Charlie Hebdo, have been committed since 2015 alone – resulting in 245 dead. 17 attacks have failed and 50 were foiled. 9 cases out of 11 targeted French police. Certainly Ireland has not been affected by terrorist attacks. However, the truth is that nobody knows the percentage chance that situation might change. After the murder of an Irish tourist in Tunisia three years ago, Tom Clonan thinks Ireland should have raised its terror threat level from Moderate to Substantial, the level before Severe and Critical. The 2017 Stockholm attack shows neutrality and non-interventionism are not definitive shields against attack, even if Ireland were not facilitating US troop and ordnance movements through Shannon. Clonan changed his mind after Stockholm: “Now terrorist attacks in Ireland are a distinct possibility”. Marianne Lecach

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    As sad as Assad

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    Unthinkable suffering The Syrian army’s apparent chemical attack on Douma on April 7 was the worst atrocity of an infernal six-week military campaign in Eastern Ghouta. This in turn was the latest horrific chapter in a war lasting seven years which has brought unthinkable suffering to millions of innocent civilians. The relentless bombardment of Eastern Ghouta, backed by Russia and Iran, follows a cruel siege of the area lasting almost five years. These events reflect the most destructive and tragic elements of human nature: when ruthless powers encircle and terrorise the vulnerable, unchecked by any higher authority. The scenes being broadcast from the region are glimpses into an abyss of inhumanity – children being dragged from underneath rubble, parents convulsed with grief, neighbourhoods reduced to debris. The repeated bombing of hospitals and obstruction of aid convoys entering Ghouta are the most depraved aspects of the Syrian army campaign. They are examples of what Holocaust survivor Primo Levi called “useless violence” – suffering inflicted for its own sake and for no other purpose. Putin’s geo-political game Russian President Vladimir Putin has been providing military and diplomatic support to Bashar al-Assad since 2015 when he was losing the Syrian civil war – partly to secure Russian economic interests and partly to assert Russia’s dominance over the US in the region. The civilians of Eastern Ghouta are pawns in Putin’s geo-political game, and it appears he faces little consequence for directing this inferno of mayhem and bloodshed from Moscow. The wholesale destruction of Eastern Ghouta resembles the fate suffered by Aleppo and Homs earlier in the Syrian war and by Grozny, capital of Chechnya, during Putin’s first venture in politicised mass killing, a year into his reign. In each of these war zones the wretched plight of civilians incited him to an extreme of merciless aggression. Putin and al-Assad appear to share a psychopathic relish for attacking the weak. Aerial footage of Aleppo after the worst bombardments in 2016 showed apocalyptic scenes of ruination. The Russian and Syrian forces may as well have dropped a nuclear bomb on this once thriving, exotic city. Night after night on our television screens we are witnessing similar destruction and misery visited upon another mass of civilians, and hearing the same lies from Russian and Syrian officials who deny appalling events that are plain for all the world to see. Footage now emerging of Eastern Ghouta reveals almost a carbon copy of the haunted, hollowed-out cityscape that remains of Aleppo. Syria abandoned Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations, set out at its inception in 1945, committed members to “tak[ing] effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace”. Humanitarian protections for civilians in war zones were enshrined in the UN’s Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Grave breaches of these conventions include “wilful killing”, “wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury” and “making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack”, all of which have without question been perpetrated on Eastern Ghouta. The UN as it currently stands is nothing more than a politically redundant talking shop for Syria. Hand-wringing about the awfulness of the latest atrocity is invariably followed by diplomatic paralysis. Where power is concentrated most – among China, the US and the EU – moral courage appears absent. The US government, supported by the UK and France, mounted a sharp military response to the chemical assault on Douma, as it did last April when 80 civilians were killed by nerve agents dropped by Syrian army planes in Idlib province. We could ask why the relentless killing of civilians by every other weapon imaginable does not warrant intervention. As before, it is likely that such a measure will not be followed by substantive protections for Syrian civilians who will remain at the mercy of al-Assad and Putin. It primarily served as a show of US military might and of Trump’s willingness to impose a supposed tougher line than Obama on chemical weapons. It   also conveniently shifted public attention from the Mueller investigation into Trump’s alleged links with the Russian administration during his election campaign. An international peace-keeping force The Syrian conflict is a complex and deadly quagmire, involving armies and militias from several countries. Any attempt to resolve it is fraught with risk. And yet the choice to allow this slaughter of innocents to continue is a defilement of our collective humanity. If a large international peace-keeping ground force were based in Syria Putin would be far more cautious in the use of his military power there, and in his sanctioning of al-Assad’s violence. This would require courage from several of the world’s most powerful nations and would involve some risk to the domestic popularity of their leaders. It would be a show of collective strength to cold-blooded autocrats who answer to nothing else. A long-term political settlement is another challenge altogether, but in the interim this would give some protection to civilians caught up in the war. Putin and his allies have been emboldened for too long by having no limits placed on their behaviour and by the implied international attitude that the lives of Syrian civilians are not of much value to the rest of the world. Liam Quaide Liam Quaide is a clinical psychologist and the Green party election candidate for East Cork

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    Democracy and war

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    DEMOCRACY AT HOME General Election 2016 has thrown up an utterly unpredictable result with Fianna Fáil in the ascendant. At the time of writing the consequences of the vote including who will survive as leaders, who will be in government and who will lead the government could not be less predictable and, without resorting to metaphysics, will reflect only opaquely the will of the people. Yet we carry on as if this did not reflect in any way on the integrity of our democracy. DEMOCRACY ABROAD The Brexit referendum should have been framed on whether the UK will be in the EU, in EFTA, or independent. But, as always in these islands, the third option, the middle one, has been omitted. The outcome, therefore, is bound to be inaccurate. And given the divisive nature of the in-or-out, stay-or-leave question, it is highly likely that the ‘leave’ option will win. In a three-option poll, the ‘leave’ option will probably lose. On 20th Dec last year, Spain went to the polls… and two months later, Spanish politicians are still arguing about who should be in government. But this is par for the course. As happens in so many democracies, open and transparent elections are followed by closed and opaque discussions, as various parties wheel and deal behind closed doors, trying to concoct a majority coalition. In 2013, Germany’s four parties took 67 days to sort something out. In 2010/11, Belgium’s dozen took 451 days! Will Ireland have the same sort of uncertainty? Democracy is for everybody, not just a majority. Conflict zones like Syria and Ukraine need inclusive governance, governments of national unity. Inter alia, this should mean that elections are preferential and proportional; that power is shared in both joint presidencies and all-party coalition cabinets; while the third ingredient is preferential voting and collective responsibility in parliament. Sadly, while we preach at least some of these ideals abroad, we practice the very opposite at home: majority rule in the Dáil and the Commons, and divisive majority voting both in parliaments and national referendums. Before the Scottish referendum of 2014, it was widely assumed that ‘devo-max’, the middle option for maximum devolution, would get about 60 per cent. The ballot, however, included only the two other options, status quo and independence. The result, therefore, was a highly inaccurate nonsense. There are times, as with the election victory of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, or our own recent referendum on same sex marriage, when democracy is wonderful. On other occasions, as in the Balkans, it was downright dangerous: the 1990 elections there were little more than sectarian headcounts and “all the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum”. (Oslo- bodjenje, Sarajevo’s main newspaper, 7.2.1999.) It must also be remembered that Napoleon became the Emperor by a popular vote, one in which he, literally, dictated the question. Hitler, too, came to power ‘democratically’. In the 1924 elections, the National Socialists won just 14 seats but, in the wake of the great depression, this rose to 107 (17.6%). The subsequent history consisted of weighted majority votes in parliament (like the Enabling Act of 1933), simple majority votes in referendums in which, again, the dictator di tated the question, and war. DEMOCRACY AND WAR The focus of this article is Westminster’s democracy and the decision to go to war in Syria. Would the outcome of the debate on bombing in Syria have been different if the chosen methodology of decision-making in parliament were not majority voting? In other words, would the House have made a different decision if the procedures had allowed for a more pluralist decision-making methodology? First of all, a little background. In 2002, in the UN Security Council debate on Iraq, Resolution 1441, both France and Germany objected to the phrase “serious consequences” in Clause 13. Yet both voted in favour of that resolution. The outcome, described as “unanimous”, was (not the but) a cause of war, of the invasion of Iraq on 20.3.2003, and of the sorry story since, not least in Syria. But that outcome – 15-nil – was not unanimous! France and Germany did indeed object to the above clause, and perhaps would have objected to other paragraphs if but the procedures had catered for such criticisms. Maybe other Council members, one or other of the ten temporary non-veto powers, which at the time included Ireland, might have had policy proposals worthy of consideration. Unfortunately, binary voting means questions are dichotomous. So countries vote in favour, perhaps because the resolution is better than nothing, perhaps because of the need for international solidarity, we don’t know. There is the main resolution; there may be amendments to this clause or that, or even perhaps a wrecking amendment; but everything is yes-or-no; it is this methodology which is at fault. Majority voting was, yes, a cause of war. A MORE INCLUSIVE PROCEDURE A more accurate methodology would allow the UK and USA to propose one draft Resolution 1441; option A. If France and Germany objected to Clause 13 or whatever, they could propose an alternative wording, even if only for this one clause, whence their preference would be a slightly revised but nevertheless complete package, option B. Syria, then a temporary member of Council, might have preferred another complete package, option C. Ireland could have preferred a more obviously neutral option D, and so on. Naturally enough, countries might seek to come together in groups to favour this or that option but the first principle would remain: everything should be on the table, (computer screen and dedicated web-page). The subsequent debate would allow for questions, clarifications, composites and even new proposals (although of course, at any one time, any one country could sponsor only one motion). At various stages, participating countries could express their preferences, so to indicate where the eventual consensus might lie. Then, at the end of the debate, all concerned would cast their preferences on a final (short) list of about five options. The winning outcome,

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    No civilisation in this jungle

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    Hundreds of people line up in a queue as soon as the doors of the van open, each hoping to get a pair of warm trousers. It is a cold November day in Calais, but some of them are wearing just shorts and slippers. In the queue I recognise a Syrian man that I met in the refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos just three months ago. He is so thin that it is hard to find him a slim enough pair. But what strikes me even more is his eyes – their sadness and exhaustion – that seem to reflect the cumulation of hardships of the past months, starting in his home country, and now continuing in Europe. That moment of hope and relief, when the overcrowded flimsy rubber dinghy he was on reached the shores of Europe, has now turned into hopelessness at being stuck in one of the worst makeshift refugee camps in Europe, the Calais camp, also known as the Jungle. It’s not a jungle though: it’s more of a disaster zone. Shabby tents and improvised shelters made out of pallets reach as far as the eye can see. The site is far from ideal for camping, the less so during this chilly rain; the sandy ground has become just muddy. Some parts of the camp are exposed to a heavy wind, and people are looking for help to fix their collapsed shelters. There is no electricity. Sanitation is severely inadequate. No more than 40 toilets are currently serving over 6,000 inhabitants – one for every 150, while the UNHCR recommendation is one toilet per 20 users. With only three taps in the camp, there are not many opportunities to wash hands. Litter is everywhere, and some areas are covered with human extracts. At one of the two refuse points of the camp I meet representatives of the Médecins Sans Frontières, who have come to collect the rubbish. They remind me to be careful what I touch due to the threat of scabies and other infectious diseases. A recent investigation by the University of Birmingham, supported by the Médecins du Monde, further highlights detrimental health situations in the camp including the prevalence of ‘white asbestos’, sometimes used to weigh down tenting. As food in the camp cannot be stored safely, much of it carries infective amounts of pathogenic bacteria, causing diarrhoea and vomiting. Several water storage units exhibit levels of bacteria exceeding the EU safety standards, too. The lack of washing facilities prevents the effective treatment of scabies, lice and bedbugs. Many here are suffering from mental illnesses. The makeshift hospital in the camp has the capacity of treating only up to 90 patients a day and there is a constant shortage of medical supplies. It is especially hard to provide treatment for long-term medical conditions such as tuberculosis. Many patients also come in with serious injuries, often resulting from unsafe conditions in the camp, or failed attempts to cross the border. I meet a young boy who has a broken arm, after a failed attempt to jump an England-bound train – a typical case. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has continually expressed about the reception conditions for refugees and migrants in Calais, stressing that security measures alone are unlikely to be effective, and urging the French authorities to relocate the refugees to proper reception facilities in the Nord Pas de Calais region and further afield. Some relief is expected from the proposed EU- supported refugee centre, that is expected to be opened in Calais in 2016. It will reportedly be equipped to deal with 1,500 persons. Another alternative would be to involve experienced non-governmental aid organisations such as the Red Cross to act as auxiliaries for the public authorities in the humanitarian field. Charities and voluntary organisations offer an invaluable contribution to the current European challenge, but they cannot be expected to supersede the responsibilities of European governments. Of course, permanent aid mechanisms will be required for as long as the conflicts causing the crisis, sometimes exacerbated by Western military interventions, are allowed to continue. Naiim Sherzai is standing at the exit of the camp, watching the trucks headed for British ports. Sherzai, who comes from the Helmand province in Afghanistan, is a former translator for the British forces, and had to leave the country because of the threat of the Taliban. He now wants to seek asylum in the UK, and ultimately to bring his wife and two children there. He asks whether we could recommend him any legal ways to enter the UK. But in Calais, there are no such routes available for a refugee. Lack of alternatives drives many to desperate acts, trying to hide in the trucks headed for the ferries or the Eurotunnel, or cutting the fence to hide in the trains. At least 16 people have died this year trying to get across the Channel. Tear gas fills the camp regularly as the police tries to drive out refugees from the proximity of the trucks entering the port of Calais. Although the tightened security measures and border controls have decreased the numbers of those who try to leave, groups of refugees lunge for their freedom every night. The rest, like Sherzai, find themselves lost – the road ahead blocked, but with no turning back either. In the jungle. In limbo. Johanna Kaprio

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    World War 1 and the Middle-East

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    If Colonel Gadaffi were still running Libya there would not be mass migration across the Mediterranean, with thousands drowned because of unscrupulous traffickers. Gadaffi was guilty of the sin of all those secular dictators. He was too independent of ‘the West’. Britain and France, backed by America, bombed him out of existence. Their excuse was that he intended assaulting civilians in a provincial town. They got the cover of a UN Security Council resolution, which a weak Russia failed to veto. Now Libya is a failed state racked by civil war. Where do these Mediterranean migrants come from? Many are from Syria, another state afflicted by civil war encouraged by the West. Since 2011 the Syrian rebels against the Assad regime have been covertly financed and armed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, with the CIA and Israeli intelligence overseeing the details. Recall the House of Commons vote which denied Tory Premier David Cameron permission to bomb Syria by 285 votes to 272 in 2013. Encouraged by the US, Cameron and France’s Hollande wanted to repeat in Syria the regime- change they had brought about in Libya two years before. It was surely Ed Miliband’s finest moment as Labour leader that he refused to go along. 30 Tories and nine Lib Dems voted against Cameron too. This House of Commons No in turn gave the US Congress the impetus to stop Obama’s impending assault on Assad. In Syria the pretext was to be that Assad used chemical weapons against his foreign-financed rebels. If these rebels succeed in overthrowing the Assad regime, the country’s Christians, Alawites and many Shia Muslims are likely to have their throats cut. The paradox now is that support for the Assad regime in Syria and its Shia-backed counterpart in Iraq looks like being the best hope of holding back the ISIS monster which these ‘rebel’ groups with their dubious sources of arms and finance have spawned. America needs Iran and its clients as allies, not opponents, in the region. Najibiullah in Afghanistan, at the time of the Russian intervention there, was the first of the secular dictators America sought to overthrow by backing the mujahideen fundamentalists against him. Osama Bin Laden was on the US payroll then. Najibullah was executed by the Taliban in 1996. Saddam Hussein was the second, overthrown by Bush and Blair in their 2003 invasion of Iraq. When Saddam ruled Iraq, Sunni, Shia and Christians lived peaceably side by side. Now Iraq too is well on the way to being a failed state, racked by the Shia-Sunni conflict which America encouraged until the tormented politics of the region spawned ISIS. Najibullah, Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi and Assad were certainly dictators but the West did not realise that worse could follow. Since Bush invaded Iraq the USA has become self-sufficient in oil because of the fracking revolution. America no longer needs Saudi oil as it once did. This is the basis of Obama’s turn towards Iran, which in turn causes consternation among the Saudis and Israelis. The Saudi-Israeli response is to try to up Sunni-Shia antagonism further, building on what the Americans had started, seeking thereby to undermine Iran’s clients in the Iraqi and Syrian governments and in the Lebanese Hezbollah, in the hope of stymying a US-Iran deal. A seminal book on the historical background to the region’s current anguished politics, is James Barr’s ‘A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that shaped the Middle East’. The catastrophe in the Middle East is rooted in Western power-grabbing for the provinces of the Ottoman Empire a century ago in World War 1. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan were all Ottoman provinces then. The different religious communities had lived peaceably side by side in them for centuries. Getting hold of them was one of the war aims of imperial Britain and imperial France in 1914. It was why Britain and France pushed Turkey into an alliance with Germany in the first months of the Great War. What was presented to British and French public opinion as a war to defend the rights of small nations and to prevent ‘poor little Belgium’ from falling under German rule, was seen by these countries’ Governments as an opportunity to expand their empires in the Middle East at the expense of the Turks. Britain particularly wanted to gain control of Palestine and with it the eastern approaches to the Suez Canal, that vital route to Britain’s empire in India. The Bolsheviks published the secret treaties between the Entente Powers within a month of the 1917 Revolution, while simultaneously repudiating them and announcing Russia’s withdrawal from the War. The British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed and the Turks delighted. The most important secret treaty was the agreement in March 1915, just one month before the Gallipoli operation, promising Russia control of Constantinople and the Dardanelles after the war, in return for Russian agreement to support British interests in Persia, next to India. Britain had fought the Crimean War in 1854 to prevent Russia taking Constantinople and establishing itself on the Mediterranean. For the same reason Disraeli risked war with Russia in 1878 and sent the British Mediterranean fleet through the Dardanelles at the time. In the lead-up to World War 1, however, a century of British rivalry with Russia – the “Great Game” that was given literary form in Kipling’s novel ‘Kim’ – was abandoned in order to induce Russia to join France in encircling Germany. Russia and France together were the only European land powers that could crush Britain’s rising commercial rival, Germany. As a seapower Britain could help in that defeat, but only land power and large armies could ensure a decisive victory. In early 1915, with stalemate on the Western Front based on static trench warfare from the Channel to the Swiss border, the British and French Governments were worried that Russia might pull out of the war altogether in view of the pasting its armies were taking at the time from

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