Sir, – Your editorial “Migrants and the Paris attacks” (November 17th) highlights the Syrian conflict as “driving” the refugee exodus and that a political solution must be found in that regard. Leading human rights experts such as Ken Roth (Human Rights Watch) have stated that the main driver of the Syrian refugee exodus is the barrel-bombing and indiscriminate aerial bombardment by the regime and now Russia of opposition-controlled regions.
UN envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura also stated in that regard last May, “All evidence shows that the overwhelming majority of the civilian victims in the Syrian conflict have been caused by the use of such indiscriminate aerial weapons”. But the voices of Syrians themselves, excluded from the Vienna talks, ought to be heeded first and foremost.
Last month, Farouq Habib, a leading Syrian activist from Homs and now director of Mayday Rescue Foundation and adviser to the civil defence rescue teams in Syria, addressed the two biggest challenges faced by the international community – the refugee crisis and the threat of extremism – during his presentation to the Oireachtas Joint Committee of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He stated that “the refugee crisis and extremism in Syria are symptoms of the original disease, which is dictatorship, atrocities and a lack of political hope. As long as Syrian civilians do not have a safe place in Syria” and civil society cannot develop, “extremism and the refugee crisis will continue”. He urged international leaders to protect Syrian civilians to stop the flow of refugees and curb extremism. A political solution would only then have any realistic chance of success. – Yours, etc,
VALERIE HUGHES,
Cabra, Dublin 7.
Sir, – Our Minister for Defence, without Dáil approval, has backed the French decision to invoke Article 42.7 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty mutual defence obligation. Irish officials said that Irish neutrality will not be affected by the decision. Ministers have repeatedly stated that Ireland is still a neutral state, in spite of allowing over 2.5 million US troops to transit to wars through Shannon airport. Ministers are afraid to acknowledge that Ireland’s policy of neutrality has been abandoned since 2001, because they realise that up to 80 per cent of the Irish people strongly support a policy of positive neutrality that includes active involvement by the Defence Forces in maintaining international peace, and avoidance of becoming entangled in wars.
Of course we should be sympathetic and helpful toward the 129 people killed in Paris. Like many thousands of Irish people, I have immediate relatives, including three grandchildren, living in France.
Ireland and the United Nations have serious obligations under the UN charter to maintain international peace in Syria. Yet the opposite is occurring. The so-called international community is now bombing Syria, contributing to the death toll of 250,000 people since 2011. That’s well over 240 Syrian people killed each day. That means that up to 25,000 Syrian children have been killed.
What Ireland must do is to promote peace in the Middle East and to oppose wars, and thereby to stop the killing of Syrian and other Middle Eastern children (and adults). This will eventually stop the sort of terrorist attacks that have killed children and adults in Paris, London, Madrid and New York.
The only justified “mutual defence treaties” are those that respect the mutuality of humanity, including our friends and neighbours in Syria and Paris. – Yours, etc,
EDWARD HORGAN,
Castletroy, Limerick.
Sir, – Declan MacPartlin (November 18th) echoes western governments in complaining about the press's use of the term "Islamic State". Of course, he and they are right in a narrowly legal sense – Isis is certainly not a state recognised by other states, by the United Nations, or by international law.
But the word “state” also has another, more consequential meaning. Social scientists usually adopt Max Weber’s definition of a state as “an organisation which successfully upholds a claim to binding rule-making over a territory, by virtue of commanding a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence [within its territory]”.
Do not misinterpret the word “legitimate”. In this context, it means only that those who dominate a territory see their own use of force alone as legitimate. It does not mean their rule is accepted as legitimate in the eyes of those subject to their rule (or the rest of the world). That other sense of legitimacy, closely related to the feeling of nationhood, may develop later – but in most states, that has historically taken decades or even centuries.
The regrettable truth is that in this social scientific sense, Isis is at least on the way to becoming a state. For the first time, a major terrorist group has captured a large chunk of territory, and within it has asserted its monopoly of the use of violence – those who challenge its monopoly are subjected to horrific punishments.
In most states, punishing law-breakers is linked to the protection of the majority who do not break laws. Probably there is already an element of this too within Isis territory,despite the horrific character of the regime. It should be remembered that outside intervention in Iraq, Syria and Libya greatly (albeit unintentionally) increased the level of danger that ordinary people experience in their everyday lives there, compared even with life under the previous dictatorial regimes. The destruction of previous monopolies of violence created the power vacuums that gave opportunities to still worse people. Yet Isis is apparently doing many of the things that states do – administering services, levying taxes, policing the towns. Some of the people there may, unfortunately, see this as preferable to a power vacuum.
It is futile to waste energy disputing what it should be called; the dangerous social and political reality on the ground is what matters. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN MENNELL,
Professor Emeritus
of Sociology,
University College Dublin.