Modern communications and interconnectedness ensured maximum worldwide publicity for the terrorist atrocities that murdered 130 people in Paris last Friday night. Their impact on international politics has been equally intense. Throughout Europe and beyond, ordinary people and political leaders have been made brutally aware of their vulnerability. They should now be more aware of how much we share that with the Malians, Lebanese, Russians, Turks, Kurds and Iraqis who have recently been similarly murdered. Together we must ensure the response is geared towards positive political action designed to remove such threats rather than reacting negatively and in a panic to them.
We must realise the political and social intent of these attacks. They are organised to provoke a backlash by proving Muslims cannot live peacefully with people of other faiths and customs. That is designed to provide further grounds for their recruitment in a vicious circle of intolerance and hatred. The immediate linking by unscrupulous politicians and media of the Paris attacks to the huge flow of refugees to Europe from Syria’s civil war fell into this trap. As if these people were not fleeing precisely the same kind of suicide bombings and arbitrary shootings as were visited on Paris, not to mention the barrel bombs, shelling and air attacks coming from the various armies and aircraft fighting that war.
A purposive international political response should enhance security and share intelligence about the threats. But it must find a balance between those protections and the larger values making our open and tolerant societies attractive to citizens. That is best done by political efforts to make peace in Syria, the cockpit of Islamic State activity and now its territorial base along with parts of Iraq. World and regional powers have stoked up its civil war in their own interests. They must find the energy to bring it to a close.
Substantial progress was made last weekend by the 17 states attending United Nations talks in Vienna and by world leaders at the G20 summit in Turkey. A timetable for a ceasefire, disengagement, negotiations on a political transition and constitution drafting followed by elections has been proposed. Major questions have yet to be tackled, chiefly whether Basher al-Assad can be part of this process after his regime's vicious conduct of the war and, then, how a new Syrian state should be organised. But at last the threat represented by Islamic State and demonstrated by terrorism in Paris, Beirut, Sharm el Sheik and Ankara have forced these states to start prioritising their enemies and negotiating common action.
Political leaders and ordinary citizens must create counter-narratives of co-operation and solidarity against those of intolerance, exclusion and hatred expressed by the Paris and other atrocities. That is the real way beyond fear and panic.