Why Paris is the world

A few days ago, in a city called Paris, in one of several related incidents – two human beings walked into a concert hall crowded with human beings and, upon the orders of other human beings, using rifles designed by human beings, shot hundreds of human beings.

If this were a fictional account about a group of aliens, your conclusion would probably be - how sad (and stupid)!

Those aliens need to grow up and stop fooling about! How does one shoot their own, using a weapon fashioned by their own, upon the directives of their own?

But when the event is reported differently; your conclusion is bound to be just as varied.

For a host of reasons - when dealing with each other, being human is somehow not enough for us. Never enough.
We have to always find some way of labeling others in a manner that highlights how 'different' they are from us.

This is how you probably heard the reports on the news - with a religious tint on the parties;

Two cruel, suicidal Muslim militants attack a Paris mall and engage in shooting spree – killing hundreds of unarmed, defenseless French citizens!

Or – to give the tragedy a ‘racial’ dimension;

Two murderous immigrant Arabs wreak terror upon European citizens in the very heart of the continent!

I’m sure you see my point.

In the wake of the tragedy, several responses have come forth from the world – ranging from a great outpouring of sympathy, to very callous ‘gratification’ steeped in schadenfreude.

It is the latter with which I am concerned.

Pleas have been made by major international media platforms enjoining the world to pray for and stand with the French, as fellow human beings, in their hour of need.

These efforts – sadly, but also very disturbingly, have been met with a furor of resistance on social media from a large section of African and Arab people; who feel that there is an element of 'selective grief' at play – with the French tragedy being treated preferentially compared to several other tragedies happening world over.

The growing chorus of voices beaming with happiness at the French tragedy – while united by a new-found religious and implacable resentment for all things French; the people, government, culture, language – seems to be split into three major camps.

The first camp is what I’d call crime-generalization.

These people draw hasty conclusions on the tragedy because they seem to have trouble distinguishing between two key principles of crime - the nature of a crime, and the circumstances under which that crime is committed.

This is best illustrated by a facebook update an acquaintance made yesterday;

‘I Beg to ask a question - Is it the in-thing to mourn for Paris? Because forty-three died in Beirut today, but people aren't going emotional over that! Hundreds fall like flies in Iraq, but no "Prayforbaghdad".
Mothers die in Uganda's labor wards due to poor services, but they won't bat an eyelid.
Which lives are worth mourning?’

My response to this camp is this:

There is no doubt that we all pray (or hope optimistically) for suffering people around the world daily. Actually – one of the earliest prayers I recall being taught as a child was to ask God to hear the prayers of all people around the world, including myself!

 There is no doubt, also, that greater attention is given, by God as well as men, to certain forms of suffering above others – which is hardly ever due to partiality, but often on account of the acuteness, anguish, context or scale involved.

When African mothers die needlessly in dilapidated hospitals - this is a failure of the public health system, and while there is strong causality between corruption and dysfunctional institutions; which is why graft is condemned world-over, corruption on the part of a government official still doesn't constitute murder.

Not to sound callous, but as an example - since one can still go to a private facility and get a medical service when the public sector collapses, then the government cannot be accused of murder since an 'life-line' is still available to citizens through private purchase of healthcare.

It cannot be satisfactorily argued that a corrupt minister sets out to kill Ugandans, for instance, by stealing money meant for roads or schools.

He may be accused of theft and greed – but not murder.

A man who steals a neighbor's goat isn’t accused (at least not directly) of starving the neighbor’s family to death – but merely of unlawful taking of property.

You may say – but for the poor, who cannot afford private costs, a failed health system is a death sentence – which sounds convincing.
Yet if this were true, there wouldn’t be any poor people left in Uganda.

But clearly, there are many (of us)!

The answer to this; is that the private sector comes in to fill the gap of a decadent public sector – with respective pricing for the rich(expensive hospitals) and poor (low-end clinics), which leaves people with hope that when government changes, things will get better.

But when facing an Islamist radical’s gun , do you think there was even a sliver of hope that the Paris attack victims would survive if they turned to the ‘private sector’?

As an additional example;

While there is an ongoing war in Baghdad and other middle-Eastern societies which are causing many needless deaths – these deaths are occurring in the midst of a war, where and when innocents get trapped between two rival factions.

But we can safely say that these civilian deaths are never the direct ‘intention’ of either side (unless, again, they are caused by suicide bombers) – and only occur under circumstances of collateral damage.

In war-torn Iraq or Syria, as in other 'conventional' conflict zones, there are areas marked as non-combatant, demilitarized or safe - because schools, hospitals and other purely civilian activities take place there.

In the case of the victims of the Paris attacks – what had been designated as a safe ‘zone’ was actually attacked and befouled.

In war, the belligerent factions even call a truce occasionally, for the Red Cross to treat wounded soldiers, let alone civilians, on either side.

Do you think the Paris gun-men would have called for a truce to their shooting to have some people treated?

If it was indeed the intention of the American or British military to wipe out the populations of Iraq or Afghanistan, as many people claim is their intent – then this would have happened already – because they have had the chance to do so.

The Americans and their Western allies, while they have been responsible for some grave war crimes – cannot be called wanton murderers, because they have defeated the armies of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein – yet have not gone on to exterminate the civilian populations of those counties under their control.

On the other hand, ponder a moment  if ISIL or the Taliban were to defeat the French army on french- soil and have full military control over the French population – do you think ISIS would even let the French (women, children and babies) live a day longer?

Your guess is as good as mine!

This goes to underscore the importance of ‘intentions’ in this debate.

Even criminal law makes a distinction between ‘murder’ and ‘manslaughter’ – otherwise justice would be a blanket affair.
The penalty of accidental killing and premeditated murder cannot be one and the same - unless 'motive' is disregarded.

This is why death by suicide attacks is different – because it is neither circumstantial, nor coincidental.

It’s different because it constitutes direct, premeditated and intentioned murder on the part of the perpetrators.

The victims are never given a chance to defend themselves, as in war, or to cry out –

 ‘Don’t shoot – I’m a volunteer with the Red Cross!’

All the attackers were seeing as they shot randomly at that mall in Paris - were ‘Western Infidels’ who deserved to die for their crimes against the Arab or Muslim people!

This brings me to the second camp – those who fall victim to Identity generalization.

This group takes pride in the attacks – because they seem unable to distinguish between the French government; which is an impersonal, bureaucratic entity manned by a handful of individuals – and the French Citizens; who are individual human beings with families and often different views to those of their government's policies.

This group thinks that by killing a handful of French citizens, ISIL has indeed attacked the French government.

Nothing could be more ridiculous!

While innocent citizens have died, the French government has remained intact – which is why France launched a series of devastating bombing raids on ISIL strongholds in Syria earlier today.

If ISIL really wants to weaken the French government and destroy its capacity to make war; it should attack the French army and kill soldiers who carry guns and have the capacity to kill – not invade shopping malls to kill babies and women who can’t even fight, with the hope of making French soldiers ‘‘ feel the pain’’ vicariously.

On the other hand, the French government has not responded by attacking all Syrian civilians in Damascus to make ISIL combatants ‘‘feel it’’ because their women and children have been butchered – but has directly engaged military targets to weaken ISIL’s war abilities.

Only cowards shoot at babies to make the fathers cry.

This other line of reasoning is that since France has a very sordid and dark colonial record, then modern-day French citizens should suffer for what their ancestors did.

I attempted to compare this childish argument to Uganda’s West-Nile communities being made to suffer for the brutality Idi Amin, a West-Niler, is alleged to have visited on Ugandans in the 1970s, and this is how one facebook commentator responded;

‘‘The debt France owes Haiti is of a different order. It is a cut-and-dry case of White Supremacist imperial states in Europe and its settler colonies, esp. in the United States, acting in concert to force through armed blockades a nation of enslaved Africans who had successfully freed themselves from slavery to pay France a hefty ransom in compensation for the loss of their lucrative slave colony. We are not yet even talking about what the state of France owes Haitians for enslaving them for centuries. The French elite and ordinary French citizens took pride in their colonies, including the slave colony of Haiti, fought to defend and expand these, and exploited those colonies for the profit of the state and people of France. This collective ownership of colonies by the French people is very well documented. And it isn't ancient history. Up to today, France has troops based in Africa for the protection of its neo-colonial interests, which include hanging on to its colonial possessions (such as Mayotte and Reunion, off the East African coast) and reminding the Francophonie/Franc-Afrique neo-colonies to continue paying France ransom money, along the lines of Haiti. ’’

As you can tell – the point of that response, eloquent and compelling as it is, was to prove the collective guilt of the French, and hence justify why they should all suffer the consequences of their grandfathers’ or governments’ sins.

In short - ISIL, by killing French women and children - was purchasing 'justice' for the millions of Africans who died and are still dying under French colonial/neo-colonial oppression.

I wish such people would recall that ISIL, which sees all Christians as enemies, is 'democratically' hateful of all non-Muslims - whether they be European or African.

Al-Shabaab in East Africa and Bokko Haram in West Africa, both avowed ISIL  affiliates, are slaughtering Christians by the thousands in religiously-inspired, targeted massacres - nothing to do with the West's military intervention in the Middle East!

To find an African 'christian' called Phillip celebrating ISIL's attack in Paris is like the lamb laughing at the calf being slaughtered - not knowing that it will be next in line at the abattoir. 

It is simply foolish.

This camp's notion, is no different from saying – ‘John, a law-abiding citizen, should be hanged because his great grandfather was a killer …’

This is no different from justifying the murder of innocent Ugandans in Kampala in 2011, by the Somali-Islamist group Al Shabaab – by claiming that the Ugandan Army’s presence in Mogadishu is an imperialist action, and warrants a brutal response to Uganda's citizens.

Of course the UPDF is in Mogadishu against the will of ordinary Ugandans – you’d say!

Well – has it occurred to you that the French Army just also might be in the Middle East against the popular wishes of the French masses, including some of those who died at the hands of ISIL!?

That’s simply how governments work – they don’t have to consult their people on things like foreign intervention, among many other things done.

A classical case is the bitterness in Uganda today against what the rest of the country has branded ‘Westerners.’

I say this quite bluntly because many of my own (close) friends and fellow-citizens have told me to my face that when Museveni’s government falls – as it eventually must do - they are coming for me and mine!

This is because these friends accuse me, thanks to the way I look, of belonging to a section of people in the country who are ‘eating’ and ‘exploiting’ the country under the aegis of the current President.

While I am not afraid of death – ever ready to embrace it should it come, and because my conscience is very clear (I am certainly not ‘eating’) – I can only sympathize with the millions of so-called ‘Westerners’ who are yet to die in a very imminent Ugandan genocide on account of their appearance and ‘supposed’ connection to the cabal of ethnic elites in this government.

Reprisal 'killings' seem to have become a favourite fetish in Ugandan socio-politics; Under Dr. Obote, the Ganda suffered for Muteesa's ''sins''; Under Amin, the Langi suffered for Obote's ''sins''; Under MUseveni, the Acholi have paid for Kony's sins.

It is very probable that in a future Uganda - my (yet unplanned and unborn) son will be forced to ''pay'' for his father's suspected 'eating' under Museveni's government.
For how could I not have eaten, it'll be asked - was I not ''one of them''?!

The third camp is of those who think of the attacks as Poetic Justice - that the French had it coming for them since, like the United States before 9/11, they have been involved in several conflicts.

Again, a face-book commentator helps me put this clearly;

''So the French retaliate immediately to the ‪Paris Attacks by bombing Syria.
Believe you me, the extremists are bound to retaliate to the retaliation: a viscous cycle of violence …''

Of course – this person makes an elementary mistake of not distinguishing in the nature of either attack.

The ‘extremists’ attacked civilian targets with the objective of inflicting as much terror as possible on French civilians – while the French are attacking military targets with the objective of neutralizing ISIL’s military capabilities.

Even if it were true, comrades - that French babies and children were guilty by historical association for the crimes of their great grandparents - butchering them by the millions will never return our dead Arab and African ancestors to us. Sad to say.

One American lady on face-book went as far as justifying the attacks by telling me how; -
''It is necessary for French citizens to suffer so that they can feel how bad it is to bomb other people's homelands ...''

My response to her was simple; -
 ''Laura (not real name) - are you prepared to see ISIL massacre you and your lovely daughters, as American citizens, in compensation for George Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003?''

She is yet to give me a response.

People tend to forget so easily that we all have some degree of culpability in all of life's wrongs.

Like that American lady quoted above - who should be fully aware that her ancestors participated in African Slavery. Should the world celebrate 9/11 as a score-evening for America's historical enslavement of Africans?

Finally - on the folly of war and unsettled scores, a passage comes to mind from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -

‘What did he do to you?’

‘Him? He never done nothing to me.’

‘Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?’

‘Why, nothing — only it’s on account of the feud.’

‘What’s a feud?’

‘Why, where was you raised? Don’t you know what a feud is?’

‘Never heard of it before — tell me about it.’

‘Well,’ says Buck, ‘a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man’s brother kills HIM; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the COUSINS chip in — and by and by everybody’s killed off, and there ain’t no

more feud. But it’s kind of slow, and takes a long time.’

‘Has this one been going on long, Buck?’

‘Well, I should RECKON! It started thirty year ago, or som’ers along there. There was trouble ‘bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went against one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit — ’

‘What was the trouble about, Buck? — land?’

‘I reckon maybe — I don’t know.’

 ‘Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?’

‘Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago.’

‘Don’t anybody know?’

‘Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they don’t know now what the row was about in the first place …’

There you have it folks - captured neatly in the clairvoyant humor of Mr. Twain.

Right from birth - the world, through its many subtle social contraptions - contrives to label us; short, Muslim, rich,  Hindu, fat, pretty, poor, Negro, Indonesian, Twa, Zulu ...

So we grow to accept these labels. We become the unsuspecting, but fiercely loyal victims of artificial identities.
We nurture them, take offense on their behalf, build protective hedges about them - and shoot whoever attempts to enter.
We become ardent defenders and implacable custodians of the tags and labels that daily eat away at our shared humanity - until, finally, nothing is left but an eyeless, soundless hole.

No matter what one says or how much meaning one claims their Christianity or Pan-Africanism adds to their life - religion, class, education, skill or nationality will never care for your sick body or offer you food when you are hungry. Human beings do that.

So rather than being proud of the things that divide us - investing time and effort in cultivating and defending the professions, religions or ethnicities that some coincidence of life led us to - let us cast the glow of our aspirations onto what we all share. Humanness.


But perhaps - that great age of peace cometh not soon.

It shall dawn, only after we've wiped each other off the face of this blue planet, embroiled as we are in these generational conflicts.

Adios!