Libya isn’t a reason to not intervene in Syria

It is right that “the West,” particularly France and the UK, should be held responsible for the sins of colonialism and for the chaos in the Middle East which resulted from the imposition of arbitrary borders in the wake of the Great War.

However, it must be remembered that fundamentalism in an Islamic context is not new. Indeed, the modern jihadist movement cannot be understood without reference to Wahhabism, the state religion in Saudi Arabia.

The foreign policy of “the West” had nothing to do with the origin of Wahhabism, since the French Revolution had not yet happened, and America did not exist, when Abd al-Wahhab met Muhammad bin Saud.

The Taliban might have banned music, prohibited the education of girls, chopped off the hands of thieves, and destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan but they were following precisely in the footsteps of Aurangzeb, the world-seizer, in every one of these points.

Professor Chellaney (Irish Examiner, November 19) seems also to have forgotten the lessons of his country of birth. India has no history of colonialism, nor intervention in foreign lands, but suffers from terrorism , the result of a dispute with Pakistan concerning control of land within their borders.

Finally, Professor Chellaney suggests that the we “recalibrate [our] counterterrorism policies” in the light of the failure of intervention, and avoid making the same mistakes in Syria. What is the alternative?

Libya might be an example of what happens when the international community intervenes in the affairs of another state, but Syria is what happens when we do not. Of which outcome is the best, I shall leave for others to decide.

Simon Hall

Lyndon Gate

Dublin 7