Raul Magni-BertonProfessor of Political Science at Sciences Po Grenoble and at the Pacte laboratory

The trial of the accomplices in the Charlie Hebdo attack got off on the wrong foot, as I feared it would. Indeed, the question to be answered is "why did the killers kill the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo and its employees? The answer to this question is supposed to shed light on what happened, and thereby clarify the role and responsibilities of each of the accused.

So why target Charlie Hebdo? The only answer that comes to mind is that the Charlie Hebdo team is "guilty" of the cartoons of Mohammed and other humorous depictions of the prophet of Islam. The explanation is obvious: the attack was carried out by religious extremists hostile to freedom of expression and Western mores. The punitive bombing that the newspaper had suffered in the past is linked to this, and may be reinforced by the fact that, a few days before the attack, the German newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost was attacked with an incendiary device after publishing the same Mohammed cartoons. It's true that these last two attacks caused no injuries and had little to do with the massacre in question. In all three cases, however, we find the spectre of religious fanaticism.

This version, which is likely to emerge from this trial, is not, however, the one found in scientific journals on terrorist attacks. The main factor explaining the occurrence of a murderous Islamist attack is a country's active role in asymmetric warfare. Recently, I presented the results of research with two colleagues to determine whether this general logic also applies in the case of the war against the Islamic State.

The results speak for themselves: involvement in this war and, in particular, the practice of bombing, is the element that best predicts the country where a murderous attack takes place. This applies not only to attacks carried out using the infrastructure of the Islamic State, but also to attacks carried out by individuals who appear to have no connection whatsoever with this organization, such as the Kouachi brothers. In fact, terrorism is essentially a retaliatory activity when, in a war, one side is clearly more powerful than the other.

The first question we should ask ourselves is: "If Charlie Hebdo hadn't made fun of the Muslim religion, would we have had one less attack to regret in France? The answer is probably "no": given France's level of involvement in the bombings, the risk of attacks was very high, so much so that we can cite, among others, the attack at the Bataclan or that on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Their victims, however, were not humorous about the Muslim religion.

Now let's ask the opposite question: "If France hadn't bombed Syria, would the Charlie Hebdo attack have happened? The answer is also, in all likelihood, negative. There was no carnage at the editorial offices of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, where the Mohammed cartoons were published. In Germany, too, there have been no murderous attacks on freedom of expression despite the publication of the cartoons, nor in any other country that has published them.

By virtue of the answers to these questions, the motive, or at least the main motive behind this attack, was not so much to harm Charlie Hebdo specifically, but to harm France. France was the target, and among the possible victims, Charlie Hebdo was probably chosen because of its drawings. There's the same logic here that led serial killer Guy Georges to choose a victim: women were his target, but the reasons why he chose one over the other will remain very superficial and insufficient to explain his murders.

It's worth noting that this version of events - more consistent with the findings of scientific studies on terrorist attacks - has been explicitly confirmed by numerous American, British, Belgian and French terrorists, including Amedy Coulibaly, perpetrator of the Montrouge and Porte de Vincennes massacres on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo attack. He said: "What we're doing is totally legitimate. You're attacking the caliphate, you're attacking the Islamic State, we're attacking you. You can't attack and get nothing in return.

Of course, this would make no difference to the outcome of the trial. The accomplices in the attack will be legitimately punished, whatever the motive. However, this trial was an opportunity to have a correct reconstruction of the facts and to allow a debate on France's strong involvement in international conflicts. It's not a question of criticizing this involvement a priori, but of taking into consideration that a war involves tragedies and that a war without response does not exist. When we go to Syria or Mali, we have to take into account the increased risk of attack that this entails.

This debate remains important for any responsible decision. It took place in Spain, for example, in 2004, when Zapatero's involvement in the Iraq war led to the Madrid bombing, which killed 191 people in the middle of the election campaign. While Aznar, the incumbent, blamed Basque independence groups, Zapatero said the obvious: it was an al-Qaeda attack motivated by Spain's intervention in Iraq. He was rewarded with an unexpected election, and withdrew his troops from Iraq. We don't know if this was the right decision, but we do know that Spain has subsequently been largely spared Islamist attacks.

Unfortunately, in France, the time has not yet come for this kind of debate. We're still following the line taken by George W. Bush after September 11, 2001, when he said that terrorists "hate our freedom: freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom to vote". This line, promoted by our governments and, presumably, by our judges, is one of emotion and anger, but also of ignorance and irresponsibility.

This post was originally published on September 11, 2020 on Raul Magni Berton's blog hosted by Médiapart