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26 Jun, 2015 16:41

‘Careful with the blame game following terrorist attacks’

‘Careful with the blame game following terrorist attacks’

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait it is important not to immediately blame Islam or Muslims, but carefully scrutinize the situation, is the message from various political analysts who spoke to RT.

Friday witnessed three deadly terrorist attacks on three continents: An attack on a gas processing plant outside the industrial city of Lyon in France, a mass shooting at a tourist resort in the Tunisian city of Sousse, and finally, in Kuwait, a suicide bomber set off explosives in a Shia mosque packed with 2,000 people during Friday prayers.

RT spoke with three political analysts for their take on the situation.

READ MORE: French gas factory attack LIVE UPDATES

Gearoid O Colmain, independent political analyst, suggests that as soon as a terror attack takes place the media tends to construct a narrative favorable to the ongoing war on terror.

RT:After the assault on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher shop earlier this year what kind of response do you expect in France amid reports this is also linked to Islamists?

Gearoid O Colmain: We have to rely on the reports that we receive initially when terrorist attacks occur. One of the problems, however, with terrorist attacks is that as soon as they occur the media tends to construct a narrative which is favorable to the ongoing phony war on terror - a war which consists in arming and funding and training Islamist terrorist groups to fight progressive countries like Libya and Syria who refuse to do the West’s bidding in terms of their geopolitics and their regional and international policies.

French special Police forces escort a woman from a residential building during a raid in Saint-Priest, near Lyon, France, June 26, 2015. (Reuters / Emmanuel Foudrot)

I can expect the same type of witch hunt in terms of anybody who asks any questions will be ridiculed and demonized as some sort of anti-rationalist hysteria that we saw during the Charlie Hebdo affair. The public was regularly told, even by the sociopathic press here, that our allies in fact are funding al-Qaeda and IS. I could quote an article for example from Le Monde in February 2012 with the head of intelligence in Turkey who was a very close confidant of Erdogan. It was openly admitted that he was funding IS in Syria and that he was supplying arms to IS and to al-Nusra, which is an al-Qaeda group. I should point out that Turkey is a NATO member. That means that a NATO member is involved in funding and supplying arms to IS. So the kind of debate that we should be having and we would have if we had a free society and a free press in Europe would be: “Let’s go after the people who are supplying arms to IS and that’s how we might be able to neutralize this threat.”

Political analyst Chris Bambery comments on recent terror attack: “We need to be very careful with the blame game…We need to understand that by saying the problem is Islam and the Muslims we are also playing to IS’s card who wants to portray it as a clash of civilizations in which they are fighting against the West, and they are somehow the good guys. We need to be very careful about that and begin addressing some of the root causes, which is why in France, in Britain there are people so alienated from society, they are prepared to join IS.”

RT:National Front leader Marine Le Pen has already called for decisive measures against Islamism. What does that mean, what does she want?

GC: Marine Le Pen and Le Front National are in a double game and their double game basically consists in stating the obvious, and the obvious to any intelligent French citizen is that our allies are supporters of terrorism, for example Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. It’s openly admitted even by the US government itself. That’s not a secret, not a theory, and that’s generally mentioned by Marine Le Pen. Why? That gains her support. But one shouldn’t be deceived by that politics because the policy of the National Front is to try to seduce people who are sick and tired of the ruling establishment to choose something different… So Marine Le Pen is someone who would like to see clashes of civilizations.

According to Bruno Drweski, professor at the National Institute of Languages and Eastern Civilizations, an important question to ask is who is benefitting from such terror attacks.

“Of course the society will be very angry at what happened and we can suppose that the government will react, but the question we have to ask is who is benefitting from these attacks - the one we had at the beginning of the year and the one we have now? Apparently they are not linked by the organization because it was supposed to be al-Qaeda earlier, and now it’s supposed to be Islamic State and we have to ask exactly the cause of that and for the moment we don’t have any information. Of course France is in the middle of the crisis in the Middle East and it’s linked with that.”

Drweski suggests the latest attack in France might be the result of homegrown terrorism.

“There are a lot of young people in France who are desperate and who can be used in that type of attack. But the question here is who is behind them, who is organizing them, paying them, giving them information and their goals? For that we don’t have any answer as we have no clear answer concerning earlier attacks like the one we had in January, like the attack in Toulouse. There are a lot of unknown things. What we know is that France is a target because it’s very active in the Middle East conflicts.”

Political analyst Chris Bambery comments on recent terror attack: “The vast majority of Muslims are going to condemn these attacks; these are criminal attacks under any criteria and particularly under the criteria of Islam itself. And that’s what every mosque I believe will be saying in response to that… So we should be building on that and try to build up process to come together. Not playing the blame game which is going to create more alienation.”

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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