Hipocrisy at its best (Anna Maria Cossiga)

For more e than one and a half year now, we have been hearing about the atrocities committed by ISIS: killings of Christians, Yazidis and Shiite, among others. Finally, on March 17th, Mr. Kerry, too, realized what is going on. Maybe he was too busy and did not have time to listen to the news. He spoke of genocide. Well, genocide is the murder of people because of their ethnic origin. In this case, people are slaughtered because they do not accept the Salafi version of Islam. ISIS is not interested in ethnicity, it has gone well beyond it. They kill indiscriminately whomever does not abide by their rules. Let's not forget Muslims are their first victims. They do not want to annihilate one ethnic group in particular, they do not care about nationality. If genocide is a monstrosity, what ISIS is doing is, if possible, even more ghastly, because it concerns the whole of humankind.

We have been hearing many words, in the last one and a half year, mostly empty words. Despite bombings that killed hundreds of people (innocents, too); despite clumsy efforts at ceasefires and truces, ISIS is still there, holding its ground.

The international community has agreed it is not a state. Mr. Kerry declared it is no more a state than he is a helicopter (June2, 2015. It seems he was listening to the news, that day). Obama said ISIS is neither Islamic, nor a state. It is a terrorist organization pure and simple (September 10, 2014). We wish it were. ISIS has affiliates all over the world and has gained ground in Egypt and Libya; not to mention the terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere. It is not simply an affiliate of the mother of all terrorism, Al-Qaeda: it is much more and much worse.

I have mentioned Libya. Look at what we have done, in Libya. Obama criticized Hollande and Cameron, for Libya. Good, and then what? The world criticized the American intervention in Iraq in 2003. Good, and then what? It is high time we think before acting, instead of criticizing and apologizing when the mess is done. Because of our huge mistakes, Libya and Syria are no more (should I add Iraq, too?). and a new state is born. It is no doubt different from the states we are used to. It has no definite territory and no borders. Yet it is a state, a new form of state come out from our worst nightmares, a network state of totalitarianism and violence and hatred, whose bloody tentacles are spreading, as if it were a huge octopus ready to swallow the world.

Indeed, does it really matter whether it is a “real” state? Or should we, perhaps, start analyzing it for what it is, a different kind of political entity, which, nonetheless, we have to deal with? Shall we go on with empty and hypocritical speeches, with useless bombings, with criticizing and condemning what the West has done? Shall we go on having as allies the same countries which started the sick ideology ISIS is based on? Indeed, those countries are not slaughtering our people. They are stoning, beheading and whipping their own people, so what do we care, as long their rulers give us what we want? A few words of condemnation will suffice, a hymn to how good we are, with our human rights, a reproach to their wickedness for not respecting them. And then business as usual. After all, human rights are for “our” humans; what those countries do to “their” humans is their business, they are sovereign states and we cannot interfere (unless we choose to). Mind, there are good Islamists and bad Islamists. Indeed, ISIS’s followers are the bad ones, while Saudis and Turks are the good ones. That is why Europe is spending billions to have Turkey stop the refugees before they reach our doorstep. Erdogan is renowned for its respects for human rights and free speech. As was Qaddafi, with whom Italy made a deal in order to prevent migrants from crossing the Mediterranean.

In the meantime, Turkey, too, is under attack, by the Kurds of PKK. Her allies from NATO, Hollande, Cameroon, Obama, condemned the massacres in Ankara and Istanbul, as Putin did. But Russia backs and arms the PYD, the branch of the PKK in Syria; the US, too, has been supplying arms to the PYD; until recently the PKK carried out its activities in Britain through nine associations, three unions, a committee and two offices operating under the control of Kurdish Associations Federation; Zubeyir Aydar, a KCK (the urban branch of the PKK) Executive Committee member, who is on the Turkey’s most-wanted list, participated in a conference in the French National Assembly (Arun Yahya, «Are We United Against Terror?», Arab News, March 19, 2016).

After all, the definition of terrorism is still quite ambiguous. And former terrorists as Begin, Arafat and Jerry Adams ascended the political podium, some of them even receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace.

They call it realpolitik.