After the Paris Attacks: Responses in Canada, Europe, and Around the Globe, Edward M. Iacobucci and Stephen J. Toope, (eds)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jez Littlewood, Carleton UniversityAfter the summer of terror in Europe in 2016, readers picking up After the Paris Attacks: Responses in Canada, Europe, and Around the Globe may expect a book about recent terrorism in Europe. It is, but not in the manner they may first believe.The Paris attacks in the title refer to the 7 January 2015 assault on the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo by Said and Cherif Kouachi, the separate 7 January attack by Amedy Coulibaly, and the 9 January attack by Coulibaly on a kosher grocery store. The Kouachi brothers killed eleven, injured eleven, and during their escape summarily executed a prostrate police officer. After extensive hunt across Paris, they were killed in a shoot-out on 9 January. Coulibaly first shot and injured a jogger and then killed a police officer and a city worker, before killing a further four Jewish shoppers at the supermarket. He was killed when police stormed the building.This edited collection draws upon contributions from a conference on 9 March 2015 at the University of Toronto. With two exceptions, all twenty-four contributors are Torontonians by location.These attacks shocked Western states, as indicated by global headlines, marches, and gatherings in solidarity, and the presence of world leaders on 11 January in Paris. As Toope notes in his postscript, the rationale for the conference was the assumption that the attacks represented inflection point and, in Toope's view, an important moment in global affairs (212).Following that January in France, ninety-one other countries suffered terrorist attacks in 2015. Neither editors nor contributors could anticipate the wave of attacks in the following eighteen months, including during 2015 in Ankara (October), Paris (November), and San Bernardino (December), and in in Brussels (March), Orlando (June), Wurzburg, Ansbach, and Reutlingen in Germany (July), Columbus, Ohio (November), and Berlin (December), as well as a further eighteen attacks in France in 2016, including when a truck was driven into the crowd gathered on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice to celebrate Bastille Day, killing eighty-six and injuring over 430. This incomplete list misses many of the 29,000-plus people killed by terrorists in 2015. Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria account for 72% of all deaths, and the Middle East and North Africa account for 84% of the 12,089 attacks and 95% of the deaths overall. Terrorism takes many forms, but despite this it remains correct to note that terrorism conducted or inspired by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State remains the predominant terrorist threat to Western democratic states. Indeed, as the Global Terrorism Index 2016 report notes, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries recorded 577 deaths from terrorism in 2015, compared to seventy-seven in 2014.[1]It is not possible to read the book while ignoring this context. Even for readers less familiar with terrorism in Western states or worldwide, so many attacks (and responses to them) have occurred since January 2015 that understanding has changed. In addition, altered perceptions are not solely related to terrorism, but also to the rise of populism in the United States and Europe. So, a fundamental question is whether or not a book focused on early 2015 is worth reading two years after the events it refers to have passed--and terrorist attacks have become much worse in France, and elsewhere, in the ensuing period? …