The massacre at Charlie Hebdo has been depicted by most media and by mainstream politicians as an attempt to thwart freedom of speech and press freedom.

That it certainly is but the attack was only the latest within a much deeper and ongoing conflict.

Only the naïve would imagine that, for argument’s sake, had France now to ban all satire referring to the prophet Muhammad this would have any impact on the continuation of more attacks on French soil.

The real root of the conflict lies in the military interventions by the US, the UK, France and other major Nato members into the internal affairs of Middle Eastern and other Islamic nations.

These interventions show total disregard to any morality and to international conventions. Their sole aim is regime change that favours Western oil giants and arms manufacturers.

Secular leaders like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were toppled while Islamo-fascist dictatorships like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where the going rate for freedom of speech is 1,000 lashes per tweet, are actively supported and rewarded by the supply of military equipment.

Billions of dollars were pumped into al Qaeda by the US as long as al Qaeda was fighting the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Iraq was invaded by Nato forces illegally and on totally false allegations.

During the period of occupation, over half a million Iraqis, mostly civilians, were killed and well over two million were displaced. The civilian population of Fallujah was bombed with chemicals that not only maimed and killed but also created several cases of cancer and horrific birth deformities.

During the conflict between Israel and Hamas last summer, schools, hospitals and ambulances were shelled and destroyed, killing innocent women and children.

US drone attacks kill innocent non-combatants, indiscriminately, illegally and knowingly.

Over the years, the CIA conducted illegal renditions, imprisonments and tortures on hundreds of Islamic suspects that did not lead to any conviction. Libya was decimated by Nato supposedly “to protect civilians”.

France intervened against Islamists in Mali and Niger and recently President François Hollande stated he is ready to bomb Libya again, obviously this time against the Islamists.

These are all cases of State terror-in-uniform, forming the other side of Islamist terror.

Malta needs very badly to tread a neutral path and strive for peaceful settlements in all conflicts

A war is therefore being waged between two terrorising sides, with the State being much bigger in scale and somehow demanding respectability.

Indeed, it fits the Augustinian description: the pirate who steals with a little ship is called a robber while Alexander the Great, who plunders with a large fleet, is called an emperor.

Yet, Islamist terror, relative to its smaller scale, is quite effective. It is evident that in Europe it is being logistically applied on the tactics of urban guerilla warfare as adapted and fine tuned to European metropolitan conditions by the Red Brigades in Italy and the Baader-Meinhof in Germany during the 1970s and early 1980s.

This is not surprising, since many jihadis now emanate from within Europe itself and operate in small cells.

Besides, if European jihadis need additional ideological and spiritual inspiration they may also turn towards the European tradition because Mohammad is not the prophet of modern terror.

Ironically, the title is held by the French revolutionaryMaximilien Robespierre.

“Terror is nothing else than swift, severe, indomitable justice; it flows, then, from virtue” is only one snippet from the great orator and French Revolution leader. After Charlie Hebdo, Europe does well by intensifying security within its boundaries but this is only a first aid measure.

As long as major European powers continue to intervene militarily in Islamic countries they will continue to create more jihadis. A lasting peace may only be achieved by the elimination of the raison d’etre of both sides in this war of terror-in-uniform versus terror by guerilla warfare.

Unfortunately, though, it does not seem probable that Europe will stop the interventions.

Public statements made by various European leaders since Charlie Hebdo sound as bellicose as ever. The mainstream political parties continue to consider the Middle East as the West’s backyard where Europe may make its presence felt militarily.

The recent decision by the UK to establish a naval military base in Bahrain is one such example.

Within this international context Malta needs very badly to tread a neutral path and strive for peaceful settlements in all conflicts. This is primarily a moral obligation and supersedes any other consideration.

Equally vital is the fact that neutrality exempts this country and its people from being considered as a legitimate target by jihadis.

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