Mourning Paris, Beirut and Kabul

Wounded man talks to media after suicide attack hits a procession of Shiite mourners in Kabul City, 2013.Demotix/ Pajhwok Afghan News. All rights reserved.Let’s take Obama’s strong statement for granted: What
happened in Paris was an “attack on all humanity”. Yes, it was exactly that, an
attack on my friends, on my colleagues, on humankind. At the same time,
however, it was also a case of terrorist aggression like the others that have
become almost quotidian – without the western media seeming to notice. Why
can’t we open our hearts to everyone in the world who is a victim of terror,
war and violence? I thought that the news could not get worse…

Having reached all my friends and colleagues in Paris,
I am slowly beginning to grasp the extent of the catastrophe. I have no words
to describe how I feel. I mourn with the victims, their families and friends –
and I mourn for all of us. I thought that the news could not get worse.
However, the media coverage, interpretations and comments about the attacks in
Paris are indeed worse.

In the aftermath of those horrific events, the
reactions and ready-made phrases are unbearable: the standard – and predictable
– reflexes to terror show that we are more seriously aligned as ‘US’ and ‘THEM’
than we acknowledge. This has a serious political impact. Only a few
politicians have managed to avoid the standard reactions and emphasize our
responsibility to all humankind to stop the aggression. Only a few politicians have managed to avoid the standard reactions
and emphasize our responsibility to all humankind to stop the aggression.

They also intimate causalities, which are so often
denied. But most of them mouth off about ‘our values’ which ‘must be defended’
and so on. And so forth… What exactly do we value?

Also repeated a thousand times is: ‘We must defend
freedom and democracy against hatred and violence!’ I can't stand hearing that
one more time. The attitudes are all the same, all voicing the same chauvinism
in a painful demonstration of the incapacity to understand that it is all the
same terror. Instead of perceiving the attacks in Paris as part of a series
staged in Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and many other countries – not
forgetting the Russian plane crash in Egypt – most western commentators
describe ‘the events’ in Paris as entirely different, an attack on our way of
life. Which ‘way of life’ is under attack in Kabul and Beirut?

Logic like this elicits calculable, repetitious
responses. There are renewed demands for border closures and (more) war. Once
again, Muslims should be expelled and the practice of Islam outlawed. The blame
is laid yet another time on a specific, already stigmatized, group. Our double
standards when dealing with horror and its victims trumpet our racism.

After
Paris

Let’s recall the various interpretations of previous
terrorist attacks. Following those in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, terror
was viewed as ‘a threat to our way of life’. Following an attack in Istanbul in
2007 it was discussed in terms of the ‘risk of importing terror to Europe’ by
admitting Turkey to the European Union. The framework has already been established
for all discussions “after Paris”.

Although any perpetrator can shout anything and anyone
can publish online declarations that will be ‘authenticated’ by ‘SITE’, a
dubious organization – and despite the fact that exactly what drives the
killers has not yet been clarified and probably never will be, even the
earliest reports presented this narrative.

According to the daily newspaper, Die
Welt: “It's about us. About how we live.” I couldn’t bear to read the
rest of the predictable, empty phrases that reveal how the writer doesn’t feel
himself to be a part of a global society: he is different, privileged. How
true. Speculations are often published that turn out
to be wrong but help perpetuate myths that fit the frame.

Relevant questions about how secret services failed,
especially in France, where surveillance had become standard, are slowly
surfacing. One of the first appeared in the Wiener
Zeitung. However, the necessary in-depth research remains to be done.
Instead, entirely speculative ‘news’ has been spread about a passport
discovered at the scene, although it is not clear if such a document could have
survived a kamikaze attack, or whether it belonged to a terrorist or to a
victim. Is it even real? Speculations are often published that turn out to be
wrong but help perpetuate myths that fit the frame – like the story of a female
suicide bomber, later revealed to be another victim.

A tweet of solidarity from Afghanistan, written in
English, expresses empathy. Because its author experiences such terror every
day, she stands with the French people and feels their sorrow. Why don’t we in
the west pause and ask ourselves why we don’t feel like her? Or do we? When we
hear about terror in Mumbai or Mali do we feel any empathy for those victims?
Our media gives no indication that we do.

Thinking of French people. We share your pain as we go through terror on daily basis by the same dark forces

— WazhmaFrogh Zulfiqar (@FroghWazhma) November 14, 2015

Other messages of solidarity arrive from Lebanon,
Egypt and beyond. But the Lebanese must wonder why so many westerners ignored
the fate of the 40 people killed in Beirut
just one day earlier. Fortunately, a discussion has been kicked off about
bias in facebook’s
security check – first introduced after the Nepal earthquake – that was
only reactivated for French people.

The same terror is destroying lives in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, Cameroon – and elsewhere. This terror is not, as so many
media outlets would make us believe, an attack on ‘us’ or ‘our’ lifestyle. It
is certainly not attacking ‘our values’. More likely, it is an attack on our
shameful failure to acknowledge that those who are forced to flee terror share
our values – and to treat them accordingly.

Refugees seek these shores believing our credo that
everyone is equal and deserves the same rights. We should do as we say.

The high-minded observation that “most of the victims
of terror are Muslims” also emphasizes difference and must be critically
reflected if we don't want to incessantly pit ‘us’ against the ‘other’. How
about assuming the humanistic stance of ‘all of us together’?

Lazily repeating stereotyped phrases traps us in dangerous
thoughts. In this era of the ‘global war on terror’ and drone assassinations,
we shouldn't hazard the reference to ‘our values’. Which values? Inflicting
endless war in the face of ‘First World’ economic decline? Accepting the logic
with which NATO
destabilized the Balkans in the 1990s (see doctrine 1999) – and which with
Turkey’s help, is now being applied to Syria?

What kind of values do we demonstrate by conspicuously
consuming the precious resources of other countries – instead of acting as the
planet’s conscientious custodians? Holding up our unrealized, allegedly
exclusive ‘western values’ like a monstrance is religious-mystical wishful
thinking – not useful social analysis and commentary.

We cannot afford to ignore the structural causes of
this mess and the violence it provokes. If we do not apply the same standards
to the whole world, if we accept terror as ‘normal’ anywhere and most of
humankind’s deepening impoverishment as ‘destiny’, the growing polarization
will be irreversible. Our fate will be never-ending war and terror as the
terrorized poor revolt with terrorist means against the war of the rich. I
don't want to get used to this prognosis.

There is an acute and growing tension between the concern for safety and the protection of our freedoms. How do we handle this? Read more from the World Forum for Democracy partnership.