Nepalis, citizens of a smallish land-locked country now reeling under a crippling economic blockade, have nothing more than heartfelt condolence to offer to the families of those killed in the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night. As of this writing, 129 people are confirmed dead; 98 others are critically injured. French President Francois Hollande labeled Friday’s seize of Paris by ISIS, an international Islamic terrorist group, as an ‘act of war’ and vowed to take every measure to punish those responsible. The perpetrators of such barbarism, in what was the worst incident of violence on French soil since the Second World War, indeed, deserve no mercy. Friday’s attacks were supposedly in retaliation against the bombing by French fighter-planes of territories under ISIS control in Syria. But if ISIS really wanted to retaliate, they could have bravely attacked French military installations. Yet by cowardly targeting innocent people—enjoying their weekend football, attending concerts or just out having a good time—ISIS loses any claim to moral superiority.
We stand with France and French people at this time of national mourning. The use of violence as a political weapon and killing of innocents can under no circumstances be justified, be it in Nepal or India or the Middle East or France. After waging a bloody civil war that lasted for a decade, resulting in the loss of 13,000 lives, the Nepali Maoist thankfully realized the limitation of use of violence as a political tool. In most cases, use of violence is counterproductive as it delegitimizes even genuine grievances. This is why we are opposed to use of force of any kind by one country on another. The American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, instead of eliminating terrorist threats as intended, radicalized thousands of Muslims around the world. ISIS, it could be argued, is a child of this American adventurism that started in the wake of 9/11. Now Western countries, including the US and France, have been pounding terrorist hideouts in Syria, in the process killing insurgents and civilians alike. Even precision-guided weapons at times fail to distinguish between the two groups.
Again, this does not in any way justify the carefully choreographed mass murder the likes of ISIS and other terrorist outfits undertake in the name of fighting the big western countries. But it would be unfortunate if France and the Western countries decided that more bullets and bombs offer the only credible solution to the menace of Islamic terrorism. In fact, such disproportionate Western response (and the ensuing public backlash) is precisely what ISIS wants. So the Paris attacks should instead be utilized to galvanize international support for a global anti-terrorism entity, possibly under the auspices of the UN, which works to mitigate risk of terrorism in all parts of the world. Having such a legal entity makes all the more sense since the threat of terrorism today is not limited to particular countries, and specific terrorist plots are increasingly hatched in many countries simultaneously, as also seems to be the case with Friday’s Paris attacks. A carefully calibrated response that targets the root causes of terrorism is the need of the hour. Terrorists are insensate, blind to consequences of their action; people’s chosen representatives ought to give better account of themselves.
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