Unjustified wars cause hatred, further violence and terrorism

I stand accused by Dr Frank Giles (Letters, Irish Examiner, July 2) of blaming the recent Tunisian mass murders on Western foreign policy and military interventions.

My views are based on academic research on peace and conflict prevention, and practical experience on peace and democratisation programmes in countries such as Ukraine, Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Congo, Tunisia, Egypt and Israel. In May this year I narrowly escaped a terrorist attack while working in south eastern Turkey, so I have no sympathy with murderers of any type — right-wing or left-wing.

Violence begets violence, and unjustified wars cause further wars, and inevitable blowback. The establishment and growth of ISIS in the Middle East can be traced back to US support for the Mujahedeen in the 1980s against the USSR in Afghanistan. The USSR defeat brought the Taliban to power. The US overthrew the Taliban government in 2001 without a UN mandate, and failed to put an honest democratic government in its place. They then repeated these mistakes in Iraq with disastrous consequences for the Afghan and Iraqi peoples.

Some of the Mujahedeen and Taliban helped spawn al Qaeda. The chaos in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, caused directly or indirectly by irresponsible military interventions by the US and its allies further radicalised and enraged the more extreme Islamic fundamentalist who have gone on to create ISIS. While the conflicts in Nigeria and Syria are mainly internal, the Syrian civil war is being fuelled by regional and Western intervention also.

If even a small fraction of the costs of militarisation and wars were spent on conflict prevention and making peace, and in making the United Nations the organisation for creating peace that it should be, then the blowback of terrorist attacks would not exist.

Those who abuse the good name of Islam to perpetrate terrorist crimes are no better than those so-called Christians who perpetrated the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, burning witches, and more recently the Catholic Church child abuse scandals.

Understanding the causes of violence and terrorism is vital towards preventing such atrocities.

Peace and justice can be achieved, but not by labelling Muslims in general as fanatics who have been slaughtering fellow Muslims, and others, for many years.

Let’s make peace, not war.

Edward Horgan

Newtown

Castletroy

Limerick