The diabolical logic of colonial interference THE "SECURITY" offensive of the right-wing French government is continuing, with extensive police checks, arbitrary expulsions and threats of institutionalized police surveillance over massive sections of the population. The "security" psychosis whipped up in the wake of a wave of terrorist actions still dominates French political life, with all of the established parliamentary parties supporting the government's crackdown.
The rightist regime clearly has the wind in its sails. In its October 3 issue, the Paris daily Liberation referred to the present climate as "Chirac's Indian Summer." The dangers that this rightist offensive pose are far from limited to France. Statements by British Premier Margaret Thatcher's home minister indicate that the Tory regime hopes to utilize the terrorist scare in France to tighten political surveillance and limit freedom of movement throughout the EEC.
In its September 25 issue, Rouge, the paper of the French section of the Fourth International, published a special two page spread responding to the questions posed by the terrorist scare and the "security" offensive of the right, which we are publishing below.
FRANCE interference.
In 1978, under the cover of the temporary UN force, a task force landed in southern Lebanon to prevent Palestinian attacks on bases set up by Israel on Lebanese territory. Confronted with the failure of this operation, Paris upped the ante, sending 1,100 into the Multi- MultiNational Interposition Force.
The "interposition" was aimed above all at rescuing the Lebanese Christian right, which was then facing an insurrection by Shi'ite Muslims and Druzes, from collapse. It was, moreover, behind the shield of the American and French troops that the extreme rightist Christian militias massacred the inhabitants of the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian camps.
At the same time, by supplying Iraq with the most sophisticated weapons, our country has become one of the forces responsible for perpetuating the bloody conflict in the Gulf, which has already claimed a million lives.
Gradually but inexorably, our rulers have thus entered into war. It is a war at once against the Shiite population and the Palestinians in Lebanon, who face constant incursions by the Israeli army, and also against Iran and Syria, the two regional powers whose ambitions run directly counter to those of Paris.
Those in power here have, moreover, not hesitated to wage this war by the most abiect means. In 1983. by the most abject means. In 1903, a Super-Etendard dropped 36 bombs on a Shiite militia training camp near Baalbek. At the same time, the DGSE [French secret service] tried to blow up a jeep filled with explosives in front of the Iranian diplomatic offices in West Beirut.
Then the DGSE tried, unsuccessfully, to assassinate the Syrian cultural attache in Madrid. Finally, it set off a car bomb in the middle of Damaseus, killing about 60 people and wounding 35. When it comes to barbarism, the French "political class" is not in a position to give anybody any lectures.
"What ye sow, so shall ye reap." In Lebanon, the French UN force soldiers have been subjected to constant harassment, and seven French hostages have been held for many months. The people of Paris are paying for an unprecedented terrorist offensive.
The Western capitals have thus made a part of the planet into a real powder-keg. There seems to be no political solution to the breakdown that is going on. Arab nationalism quickly showed the limits of its anti-imperialist claims. Defeated militarily in 1982 in Beirut, the Palestinian resistance has continued to fragment.
In the region as a whole, the peoples have found themselves con-
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CHRISTIAN PICQUET
Horror and revulsion are what you feel at the blind violence that has been striking Paris for some weeks. Whoever is responsible for these acts, it is impossible to claim that such monstrous deeds serve any progressive purpose, despite the references by the Committee for Solidarity with Arab Political Prisoners (CSPPA) to "humanism and the Paris Commune."
The experience of all liberation movements testifies to the fact that the emancipation of peoples has never been aided by striking blindly at passers-by in the most crowded places.
The bombers knew very well that they would not hit any representative of imperialism when they planted their devices in the Hotel de Ville post office, the cafeteria in La Defense [a Paris business district] or the Tati stores [cheap stores in central Paris ].
So, they coldly murdered working people, both French and non-French. For that reason, they can only be considered murderers and low-lives.
But it is not enough to be angry. The only explanation for the terrorist attacks striking various capitals is the souring of the situation in the Middle East.
The Western powers are seeing the consequences of their policy. Since the start of the century, they have continually intervened in this vast geopolitical conglomeration in order to assure the interests of the banks, the trusts and the arms merchants.
Up until the last world war, most of the countries in this area were under the control of France and Great Britain. Since then, through the drawing of border lines, the exacerbation of religious or communal divisions, the creation of the state of Israel, the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land and repeated military expeditions, Western powers are continuing to impose their will.
If France is becoming a special target of anonymous terrorists, it is because it is playing an active role in this minefield. Its financial and trading links with the Lebanese Maronite bourgeoisie remain very strong. Its arms industry sells 70 percent of its products to Middle Eastern countries and France gets most of its energy supply from the region.
Given so many converging interests, it is not surprising that all French governments - of the right as well as the left - have been caught up in the diabolical logic of colonial a8 International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
fronted with greater poverty and the growth of murderous conflicts. It is the sort of thing to feed terrorism and the proliferation of suicide squads.
Such terrorism draws from two main sources. The first is the desperation of tens of thousands of young Palestinians. Robbed of their national rights and parked in camps in Lebanon or Jordan, subjected to Zionist repression in the occupied territories, having grown up under constant bombings, they have no recourse except a limitless hatred against all those who seem responsible for their plight. And this can include the Western peoples in an indiscriminate way. "Pressure diplomacy"
The second source is Islamic fundamentalism. Encouraged by the fall of the Pahlevi monarchy and given impetus by the reawakening of the powerful Shite community in Lebanon, it today focuses the aspirations of a notable section of the disinherited in the Middle East.
Such a situation no doubt favors all those who are fishing in troubled waters. In the context of the veiled war described above, terrorism is becoming a means of "pressure diplomacy" in the hands of certain regimes.
In that case, what significance does the language used by variously named networks have? Their initiatives serve only as a cover for tests of strength among states. And they have logistical support from several secret services.
So, the present bombings in Paris cannot be understood apart from Syria's aim of imposing its hegemony over Lebanon in opposition to France and Tehran's determination to change the orientation of the Quai d'Orsay [the French Foreign Ministry ].
As if to increase the confusion still more, the alliances of these networks vary, and it now seems probable that they make "contacts" among each other in accordance with which they agree to work for obscure paymasters. This makes all sorts of manipulations conceivable.
Who can say, for example, what relations the FARL, the CSPPA and the Partisans du droit et de la liberte [Fighters for Justice and Freedom] really maintain among themselves? Who could predict exactly the itinerary of the Abu Nidal group, which has enjoyed successively the protection of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon? Who knows what section of the Iranian state apparatus is concealed behind the Islamic Jihad? All this is very far from the interests of the peoples.
There are those who could not hope for a better windfall. The present climate enables them to cover the monstrous deeds of the CSPPA and the struggle of peoples for justice and freedom under a common opprobrium. Above all, it offers them a way to cover up the other terrorism that tha owners practice on a much vaster the owners practice on a much vaster scale against the oppressed.
This does not simply mean the activity of some special services that I described in the case of Lebanon. To safeguard and maintain their power, the ruling classes systematically employ violence. Our own bourgeoisie showed in the Indochina and Algerian wars what it was capable of. Violence of oppression and exploitation
Every day, Reagan demonstrates that he will not tolerate a people challenging his leadership. His mercenaries are harassing the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and his sophisticated bombers are always at the ready to pound Libya.
Even in the capitalist centers, in the heart of those states that are supposed to be the most democratic, the rich assure the submission of working people by means of coercion. The violence of exploitation, from which all significant social progress has to be wrenched by force, is echoed by the violence of the military and police apparatuses or by gangs organized and paid by the bosses to dissuade wage earners from overthrowing the system.
In this context, the exploited often have no other possibility to be heard and defend their rights than to use violence in their turn. Who can deny the right of peoples to rise up to bring down regimes that oppress them? Who would dare deny the Blacks of South Africa the right to fight arms in hand against the apartheid system or deny Chilean revolutionists the right to want to get rid of Pinochet as fast as possible?
Likewise, whatever we might think of the tactics and orientations of the PLO and the IRA, how could we fail to support resolutely the Palestinian fighters who are being denied even the right to a national existence or the Irish nationalists who oppose the partition of their country?
But all that clearly has nothing to do with the bloody terrorism in Paris.
"We are at war," Chirac said. And Lecanuet tried to top him: "The country has entered into resistance." This warlike rhetoric expresses perfectly the determination of the right in power to establish a climate of fear, and through that to get people to accept a situation close to a state of siege.
Police checks, appeals for informers, reestablishment of the visa requirement and use of the army to patrol the borders cannot stamp out terrorism. Repression always only attacks the manifestations of a problem and International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
Cleaning up after a bomb explodes in police offices in Paris, July 1986 (DR)
cannot deal with its underlying causes.
Elusive by its nature, the sort of action we are confronted with cannot but endure as long as the test of strength continues between Paris and the Middle Eastern movements.
A bomber can be identified of course, and even apprehended. But another will take his or her place, with the same logistic support. Moreover Pasqua [the French Minister of the Interior] and Pandraud [the Minister of Security] have just demonstrated their impotence in a spectacular way by plastering the walls of France with pictures of relatives of George Ibrahim Abdallah (the presumed leader of the FARL whose release is demanded by the (SPPA), when they were in Lebanon.
To justify their calls for manhunts and reestablishing the death penalty, some people argue that the United States, where police surveillance is very extensive, has escaped terrorist attacks. This is forgetting rather quickly that American offices around the world have been among the most frequently hit targets and that the powerful FBI has never managed, on US territory itself, to prevent terrorist attacks by Puerto Ricans, Armenians or Zionists.
The Tati store in the rue de Rennes - 4 shoppers dead and 50 wounded (DR)
If Europe is a special target of the Middle-Eastern networks, it is first of all because of its geographical position, a point where the emanations of most hotspots around the world converge, and because of the often precarious situation of its governing teams. All the ravings of the likes of Pasqua cannot change anything in this respect. Fatal trap
However, and no mistake should be made about it, the concern of these gentlemen lies elswhere. With emergency measures, security laws and anti-immigrant measures they have put together all the elements for challenging legal guarantees in this country. A not insignificant part of the population has been put under close surveillance. After the searches in Arab circles, the big press has now started looking for "European supporters" of terrorism. The presence of the army on the borders adds the final symbolic touch to the picture.
Everything is in place for an authoritarian regime that tomorrow would criminalize certain political, trade-union or humanitarian activities.
From Jospin [Socialist Party leader] to Marchais [Communist Party leader] to Lecanuet [leader of a liberal wing of the right] they have rushed to the Hotel Matignon [the premier's office] to encourage the premier to show "firmness."
It is a fatal trap that the SP and CP leaders have just put their feet in. In this way, they are being drawn into endorsing the hypocritical outcries of a right that has never shown the slightest concern over the cowardly murders in the GAL [French gangsters recruited by the Spanish state to assassinate Basque nationalist refugees] and which has carefully avoided focusing public indignation on the conspirators of SOS-France, the group of racist killers and paranoiacs in the south of France.
History attests to the fact that a climate of "national unity" always favors the game of the worst enemies of labor. The recent events will not prove an exception to the rule.
The atmosphere of "national consensus" is offering the government an unhoped-for opportunity to divert attention away from its policy of increasing unemployment and chopping away social gains. Most of all, it is providing a cover for advancing its attacks against civil rights and for stepping up racial discrimination.
We should remember that not so long ago the "national unity" that set the context for the struggle against the members of the FLN [National Liberation Front of Algeria] made it possible to establish a curfew for all North Africans. It took 20 years for the iniquitous laws adopted in that period to be repealed.
Today again, in the name of the need to wage ruthless war against terrorism, they are talking about a state of emergeney and Article 16 [which grants special powers to the president to rule by decree in emergencies]. And the idea is being raised in more and more precise terms of counter-terrorism, or military reprisal against countries "suspected" of aiding the bombers. This indicates the diabolical intertwining of colonial adventures and flareups of terrorism.
That is why we will never add our voice to the chorus of the rulers and the politicians. We think that the only way to isolate the clandestine groups is through independent mobilization of the workers movement and of the democratic and anti-racist associations. Only such mobilizations can force them to end their lunatic escalation without favoring antiforeign amalgams and without drifting onto paths that could be fatal to liberty.
We are also convinced that there is no solution to the vicious circle of war and terrorist attacks unless French imperialism ends its wide-ranging intervention in the Middle East.
For this reason, we are demanding more energetically than ever the withdrawal of French troops from all countries where they are engaged, starting with Lebanon, as well as the ending of arms sales to countries in this region. It seems to us that only such a course can save the people of France from being the hostages of a war they never wanted.
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International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
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