The Charlie Hebdo Terror Attack.

This morning three masked gunmen forced their way into the offices of the satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris, France. Whilst shouting "God is Great" in Arabic (Allah Akbar) they opened fire killing 10 employees and 2 police officers before fleeing the scene. 5 people remain in a critical condition.

Coming from a long French history of satire Charlie Hebdo is no stranger to controversy. When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten received death threats, boycotts and legal challenges over their decision to publish 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in 2005 Charlie Hebdo showed solidarity by re-printing the cartoons along with some of their own in a special edition they claimed had been guest edited by the Prophet himself. For this they were taken to Court by Paris' Grand Mosque, the Muslim World League and the Union of French Islamic Organisations on criminal charges of racism. When Charlie Hebdo eventually won the Court case in 2007 their offices were firebombed and have remained under police protection ever since.

More recently Charlie Hebdo have acted as very vocal critics of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) with their October 2014 edition headlined "If Mohammed Returned" alongside a cover cartoon showing the Prophet being beheaded by an ISIL fighter. In that edition Charlie Hebdo's editor Stéphane Charbonnier (AKA "Charb") who was killed in today's attack declared the Kurds who are currently fighting ISIL in Iraq and Syria to be heroes who defend us all.

The revolting behaviour of ISIL and those such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who falsely claim, for their own selfish reasons, that ISIL in any way represent Islam has triggered something of an anti-Muslim backlash in Europe. For example in Sweden there was a wave of attacks on Mosques over the Christmas period and just on Monday (5/1/15) around 18,000 people attended an anti-Islam march in Cologne, Germany. They were though met by around 30,000 counter-protesters and Cologne's famous Cathedral turned off it's lights in a sign of defiance to the protesters.

However the main driver behind this wave of Islamaphobia and more generally anti-migrant (particularly Syrian and Iraqi refugees who are fleeing ISIL) sentiment has been the economic troubles that the European Union (EU) has been suffering from since 2008. The EU of course seems determined to make these economic problems even worse by pursuing damaging sanctions against Russia in an effort to punish it for its long term opposition to ISIL.

As I explained before Christmas France has been particularly vulnerable to these problems due to a host of reasons including its own self-inflicted economic woes and historic problems with Muslim migrants that date back to when north African countries such as Morocco, Algeria and parts of Libya were French colonies. Prior to Christmas these pressures combined leading to an ISIL-inspired, lone-wolf terror attack on a police station in Tours which was followed by run-over attacks in Dijon and Nantes. It has though since emerged that the attacker in Dijon had a long history of severe mental health problems and the attacker in Nantes was very drunk at the time making it unlikely that he was a particularly devout Muslim although ISIL supporters aren't the devout Muslims they would like everyone to believe that they are.

Today's attack seems much more serious then those incidents though because as there were at least three attackers this clearly wasn't a lone-wolf attack and was much more planned then a guy simply crashing his car into pedestrians in a moment of madness. However although illegal it isn't that difficult to get hold of automatic weapons and even Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) in France with many coming in from eastern Europe under the Schengen agreement and others coming in from North Africa via Marseilles. So as with the attack on the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa in October 2014 rather then looking at ISIL fighters who have returned to carry out attacks I think we're looking more at wannabes who never quite made it to Iraq and Syria who are now carrying out self-directed attacks to avenge the air-strikes against ISIL.

This poses the obvious question of why ISIL continue to remain undefeated after nearly five months. After all destroying them as an organisation is the surest way of making sure that their supporters don't carry out attacks to defend them. Although I am trying to take a week off at the moment the reason why I feel able to do so is because really not much is happening in the fight against ISIL at the moment. The situation in Kobane really provides a microcosm for the entire conflict because the although US-led coalition has reluctantly been prepared to fight ISIL to a halt they still seem to have no desire to assist ground forces in beating ISIL back and forcing them from the territory they hold.

This is simply not acceptable because it means that the civilians living in ISIL held areas are still suffering at their hands and as today's events demonstrate civilians in nations involved in the coalition are being forced to live with the threat of revenge attacks.

It is also hard to explain because of ISIL's main supporters Turkey simply has nothing it can threaten the coalition with and with oil dropping below USD50/barrel the Saudis have already followed through on their main threat and it's hardly got us all bursting into tears.

16:20 on 7/1/15 (UK date).

Edited at around 12:40 on 8/1/15 (UK date) to add;

Overnight the French authorities identified the three suspects as Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi two brother's in their 30's of Algerian descent who are believed to have been the gunmen and Hamyd Mourad and 18 year old who is believed to have acted as an accomplice.

Although the timing's unfortunate and it's nothing more then a coincidence there seems to have be a similar dynamic between the three as there was between the Tsarnaev brothers who (allegedly) bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013. That is to say that there is one dominant brother - in this case Cherif - who is little more then a lone wolf who has simply used family ties to involve his brother and a much younger, more impressionable hanger-on. That seems to be supported by the fact that Mourad last night chose to hand himself into the police rather then going on the run.

The reason why the French authorities were able to so quickly identify the suspects is that Said Kouachi left effectively his driving license (ID card) at the scene. This hardly fits in with the profile of elite Jihadi commandos who'd been especially trained and dispatched to carry out the attack that the British and in particular the US media have been trying to portray the suspects as.

Although I think there's a variety of reasons for why this angle is being pushed to the fore - for example I think the UK Sky News reporter who first made the claim was simply shocked by the situation and didn't really know what he was talking about - the US in particular seems desperate for us to believe that the attack was far more organised then is actually was. The reason for this seems to be twofold;

Firstly once you realise that this much damage can be done by someone simply with the desire to do so and access to firearms the world suddenly becomes a very scary place. We've seen evidence of this today with the shooting and killing of another French police officer in Paris. Rather then being in any linked to yesterday's attack this seems to simply be the work of a copycat(s) who saw the Charlie Hebdo attack on TV and decided to join in.

Secondly though if the US is forced to admit that the Charlie Hebdo attack was simply a spontaneous reaction to French military action against ISIL rather then some highly organised conspiracy it places huge pressure on the US to step up the pace of the anti-ISIL operation in order to protect the public by quickly defeating them rather then playing for a draw.

Therefore I'm starting to think that in future anytime the US-led coalition refuses a request to equip the Kurds or provide them with close air-support in Iraq then an EU sanction will be removed from either Russia or Iran in response. After all I don't see why we should tear ourselves apart simply because Obama is a coward.