Will France understand Ukraine’s pain now?

More than three million people took part in unity marches held in several French cities on January 11 to commemorate the victims of the recent three-day-long series of terrorist attacks, which resulted in 17 people dead and 3 terrorists neutralized. The Paris march was the largest of all, attended by about 1.6 million people. According to the police report, it was the largest mass event ever in the streets of the French capital. The marchers included people of all ages and callings, belonging to different social groups, the elderly as well as children, as all joined forces to express their solidarity in the fight against extremism. At the beginning of the march, the column was led by leaders and high officials from almost 50 states, including President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, who tweeted: “Ukraine is uniquely prepared to understand the pain of France.”

President of France Francois Hollande said that Paris became the capital of the world on January 11. The day before, as the 54-hour-long hunt for the terrorists ended, he warned the French that the danger remained, and urged people to stay vigilant. “This is our best weapon, unity, that we must demonstrate our determination to fight against anything that can divide us and first of all, to be implacable, to be totally against any racism and anti-semitism,” the French president stressed.

Meanwhile, British leader David Cameron called the Unity March a demonstration of solidarity, uniting people throughout the nation, young and old, black and white. “We are saying we stand with the victims and are not going to put up with this because we are a free, open, tolerant country. I feel exactly the same,” he emphasized in an interview with the BBC. The British prime minister added that there was no way to make absolutely sure that such attacks would not happen in London.

Western intelligence agencies expressed similar concerns. The attacks in Paris may be just the beginning of a wave of attacks across Europe, Bild am Sonntag reports, citing the US National Security Agency sources. Director general of the British MI5 counterintelligence service Andrew Parker also said that the risk of “high casualty attacks” had increased.

For his part, US general Michael Flynn, who led the US Defense Intelligence Agency until August 2014, also warned the German publication that new terrorist attacks were likely to follow the Paris ones. “We should not be overawed by these attacks. We will see more of them,” Bild am Sonntag quoted Flynn as saying.

Lots of questions are being asked in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, including their nature and why intelligence agencies had failed to prevent them. Was al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, or even Russia, involved? More generally, who is benefitting from them? Will France, hit by this terrorist attack, understand Ukraine’s pain now, as our country is facing aggression instigated by the terrorist state of Russia?

Senior editor of The Economist and senior vice president of the Center for European Policy Analysis Edward Lucas told The Day regarding this matter: “I do not believe that Russia is involved in this terrorism, but I do think Russia is trying to exploit the aftermath. The Kremlin wants to use the new populist/anti-systemic right-wing parties in Europe. It funds them and gives them rhetorical support. It likes their anti-Americanism, and their hostility to the global liberal norms which are now in trouble. This is not a security problem. It is a political problem. I agree with John Schindler (20committee.com) on this. The security services cannot cope within the current rules with the numbers of trained, radicalized people who are willing and able to mount these attacks. We are unable to cope with this threat through purely police and intelligence measures. As with Putin, this problem is a symptom of Western weakness and the failure of collective action.”

Meanwhile, John Schindler noted in his article “There Was no ‘Intelligence Failure’ in Paris,” published on The XX Committee: Intelligence, Strategy, and Security in a Dangerous World website: “Western intelligence services since 9/11 have become very proficient at counterterrorism, with impressive collaboration in all disciplines, and France’s services rank among the best anywhere.

“If there was an ‘intelligence failure’ here, and we can be sure that embarrassed Paris politicos will be looking for one, it was small-scale. The real problem is that French politicians, as in all Western countries, have absolutely no idea what to do with the burgeoning numbers of aspiring jihadist killers in their midst. That is a political, not security, issue, that no amount of funds or personnel devoted to intelligence work can ameliorate. Besides, I sense no desire for France to become an East German-like counterintelligence state where one-third of the population is secretly reporting on the other two-thirds, including friends and family, to the secret police. Hence a political solution is required to Europe’s mounting crisis with homegrown Islamism, since there is no security solution at hand,” the expert stressed.

Director for Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Nigel Inkster pointed out in his article “The Aftermath of Charlie Hebdo“ that the attack was carried out by persons who were already on the radar of the French intelligence services, and worse still, just as the services were on high alert. Inkster stated: “France’s security service – formerly the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), now the Direction Generale de la Securite Interieure (DGSI) – enjoys a high reputation among counterpart organizations for professional competence. But the fact that they were unable to anticipate or prevent the attack testifies to the difficulties of dealing with a new fragmented terrorism faced by Europe and the West. In this new environment externally directed efforts to replicate the large-scale mass-casualty attacks epitomized by 9/11 have largely been replaced by attacks of much less ambition which are easier to carry out and harder to detect or prevent and yet which attract high levels of publicity – the so-called ‘propaganda of the deed.’ Situation is further exacerbated by the fact that the emergence of ISIS on the world stage with the declaration of a caliphate has put it on a collision course with an al-Qaeda that seeks to promote a universalist rather than a regionally-based agenda. There must be a risk that al-Qaeda will seek to re-establish its somewhat tarnished credentials by undertaking attacks of its own.”

Meanwhile, Clare Ellis, a research analyst with the British independent defense and security think tank RUSI, believes that “this attack on Charlie Hebdo will be perceived as further evidence of an evolving terrorist threat, with emphasis shifting from complex bomb plots, requiring significant transnational planning and command and control, towards attacks using knives or guns, possibly mounted with little or no external direction. The success of security services in the UK and beyond in disrupting large-scale plots certainly appears to have forced a tactical change. However, while the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in May 2013, the armed attack at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels in May 2014 and the December 2014 attacks in France achieved their horrific aims, the perpetrators demonstrated limited skill and experience. The attack at Charlie Hebdo appears strikingly different in planning and execution, and although important questions remain unanswered, that is immediately a cause for concern.”