By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
March 23, 2016
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) extends its deepest sympathy to the victims of the latest bombings in Brussels claimed by the Daesh (Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL) as well as those earlier perpetrated in other cities of the world by groups affliated with either the Daesh or Al Qaida. We extend our sincere condolences to the families of the victims and to the peoples subjected to intimidation by senseless acts of terror against the civilian population.
We condemn the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Brussels which have murdered 36 people and injured 250 people at the Zaventem airport and at the Maelbeek metro station. These are the latest of terrorist attacks perpetrated by cells of the Daesh. There have been hundreds of such attacks by either Daesh or Al Qaida since those in Beirut and Paris last year. Most of these have been in war-torn Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Outside of these have been those in Bamako, Nigeria on November 20, 2015, in Tunis, Tunisia on November 24. 2015, in San Bernardino, California om December 2, 2015, in Istanbul, Turkey on January 12, 2016, in Jakarta, Indonesia on January 14, 2016, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on January 15, 2016, in Ankara, Turkey on February 17, 2016, in Mogadishu, Somalia on February 26, 2016, once more in Ankara, Turkey on March 13, 2016 and in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast on March 14, 2016.
Daesh brazenly boasted of responsibility for the bombings last October in Ankara which killed around a hundred people and injured more people, last November in Paris that killed 129 people and in Beirut that killed 40 people and injured 300 others and for most of the subsequent bombings. Daesh is now gloating over the Brussels bombing which it has claimed.
Terrorist bombings are aimed at killing and maiming civilians. They are reprehensible as crimes against humanity. They are inhuman and senseless and cannot be justified by any rational political cause or military strategy. By attacking innocent civilians, they cannot win adherents and gain political or military strength. They are abhorred by the people.
But the terrorism being carried out by armed cells of the Daesh or Al Qaeda are small in scale and pale in comparison to the massive bombings in the mega-terrorism being carried out by the US and NATO forces against the people in the course of wars of aggression and military intervention. These have killed millions of civilians, destroyed hospitals and schools, industrial areas and civilian infrastructure,and razed cities to the ground, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria.
The use of prohibited weapons like white phosphorus bombs that kill by burning deep into the skin of the victims as well as the use of depleted uranium that cause cancer epidemics in the affected communities is horrendous. The imperialist chieftain Obama and the Israeli Zionists have killed far more men, women, children, the elderly and sick people than the Daesh and Al Qaida, with the use of drones and bombs targeting hospitals, schools, residential buildings, weddings and other social gatherings.
The US and other western leaders display their grand hypocrisy when they condemn the jihadist perpetrators of heinous terrorist crimes. In the first place, Daesh and Al Qaida are creations of their CIA and MI6 and other pro-US intelligence agencies like Pakistan’s ISI and Israel’s MOSSAD in order to topple certain regimes. Subsequently, after allowing themselves to be used for imperialist purposes, these jihadist groups would proceed to use terrorism to pursue their own aims by using senseless bombings and indiscriminate shooting at innocent people.
They find fertile ground for recruitment among Muslim youth who crave for revenge because they have lost close relatives and friends to imperialist aggression, have seen their native lands laid to waste by the US and NATO wars of aggression for regime change and are subjected to discrimination and religious bigotry in the imperialist countries. A big number of recruits of the Daesh and Al Qaida have thus come from these countries.
Western leaders deceive their own people and the people of the world when they go through their grandiose rituals in front of TV cameras of pointing an accusing finger at these jihadist groups that they have created in the first place in order to cover up their bigger crimes in their wars of aggression against the people of the Middle-East and Africa in pursuit of their imperialist aims of plundering the wealth and resources of these strategic regions.
The bombings by these armed groups that victimize the people of Europe are the bitter fruit of the cruel inhuman actions and policies of bourgeois leaders who follow the baton of the US in its wars of aggression and military intervention. The people of Europe must therefore rise up and demand from their governments to stop their blind obedience to the US war agenda.
The people of Europe must likewise be vigilant that these terrorist incidents are not used by bourgeois governments to justify fascist laws and practices and the imposition of a police state on the people and the millions of refugees displaced from their countries by imperialist wars of aggression. French President Hollande has already used the Paris bombings in November to impose a state of emergency. This could be a prelude to more repressive measures.
The people of Europe must not allow themselves to be victimized twice over by their own governments: suffer the blow back from the actions of their governments in joining or supporting the wars of aggression of the US and the possible use of these terrorist bombings to impose a terrorist police state to further curb their freedoms.
We call on the people of Europe and the world to condemn and oppose the entire range of terrorism against the people, including the mini-terrorism of Al Qaida and Daesh that has been inspired or provoked by the mega-terrorism of US imperialism and NATO. We call on the people of Europe and the world to oppose any attempt of the ruling governments to use the existence of Al Qaida and Daesh cells and other US-created terrorist groups to justify the US doctrine of permanent war and state terrorism to further curtail and violate the people’s basic democratic rights and fundamental freedoms. ###
