Demotix/Elyxandro Cegarra. All rights reserved.A week of horrible carnage – bomb blasts in Beirut and Baghdad and then the cold-blooded shootings in Paris. Each of these acts of terror left dead bodies and wounded lives. There is nothing good that comes of them – only the pain of the victim and then more pain as powerful people take refuge in clichéd policies that once again turn the wheel of violence.
How does one react to these incidents? Horror and outrage come first. They are instinctual. We grieve for the dead: the young parents of Haidar Mustafa (age 3), who shielded him and spared his life as the explosion in Beirut tore them to shreds. In Paris, the terrorists killed Djamila Houd (age 41), who worked for Isabel Marant, at a café. There are faces to each of the victims. Each of these faces will appear in the press and on social media. They will smile at us, telling us about their best days and their promise. None of them had an active role in any conflict. Their murder had nothing to do with them.
We will be bewildered by the incomprehensibility of these deaths – the waste of life in the face of death. We will search for explanations. It has already become clear that the perpetrators in all these bombings – Baghdad, Beirut and Paris – is ISIS or “Daesh”, the group that controls a large section of Iraq and Syria as well as parts of Libya and Afghanistan (with fraternal groups in Nigeria and Somalia). ISIS, like al-Qaeda, is tentacular – it does not have a head, only limbs that are inspired to act in fury. If it is ISIS, why are they striking in these places?
