France’s Rude Awakening

Last Monday, for the first time since the outbreak of violence, President Chirac spoke to the French public in a televised address about the urban rioting that has raged throughout the country. France is entering a third consecutive week of unrest marked by arson attacks that were triggered by the death of two teenagers of Arab and African origin in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.The teenagers were electrocuted as they hid from the police they thought were following them. Since that terrible incident on the night of October 27, there has not been one quiet night in France. The government is slowly awakening from its apathy with the revival of an emergency law last invoked during the Algerian War of Independence.Meanwhile, French officials – policemen, firefighters, and ambulance staff – were the targets of gunshots, Molotov cocktails, and stones. The perpetrators of these vandal attacks are young Muslims, sons of Arab and African immigrants who came to work in France more than half a century ago. The vandals’ age range varies from the early teens to late 20s. All of them are male and they share a collective identity based on where they grew up and the destiny that binds them in the suburbs, or French cites.Two main factors have helped give rise to the current troubles: The French approach toward this population segment and the attitudes of youth living in the cites, where an explosive situation has been building for decades. The burning of cars was not the result, as some in the French press have asserted, of a sometimes too-outspoken interior minister who called the delinquent youth racaille, or scum. If Minister Sarkozy is known for promoting a “zero tolerance” policy toward radical Islam and its supporters, he is equally famous for creating the first successful representative Muslim body in France, the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman, as well as supporting affirmative action for minorities – a stance rejected by French conservatives, President Chirac, and Prime Minister Villepin.The rage expressed by the young French Arabs can be partly explained by a rampant racism in French society. Historian Benjamin Stora, the French authority on Algeria, wrote: “With the Algerian war, colonial racism starts its crossing of the Mediterranean.” This racism still exists and today France faces another war – of a similar kind to the one that caused France to relive a Dreyfusian episode and precipitated the fall and birth of a republic. Recent official reports have also concluded that racist discrimination exists in France, particularly in the job market. The Roger Fauroux report on racial discrimination in the French job market in 2005 described that a man with an Arab name, French citizen or not, has five times less chance of getting a job than a “white Frenchman” would. As unemployment rates increase, the first victims of a strained economy, even more difficult since the introduction of the Euro, are the immigrant communities.Clustered around major cities like Paris, Lille, Marseille, or Lyon, the low-income suburb – la cite – has been abandoned by French natives and is mainly composed of non-French ethnic populations, mostly Muslims of African and Arab heritage. Even if some of the rioting did in a few cases bear a religious character, such as the reports of some youths choosing cars to set on fire based on whether or not they had Islamic amulets, the looting and rioting did not have a religious base. This was confirmed by the declaration of fatwas (religious edicts) against rioting by French imams, which were neither acknowledged nor implemented.Another problem in the cites is that the population is increasingly becoming more religious. The suburbs raise the concern of French authorities not only for their lack of security – where girls feel protected from harassment by wearing the hijab for example – but also lately for being potential grounds for radical Islam, especially among the youth, as described by the state commissioned report on secularism in France in 2003.These new generations occupy an uneasy place between their father’s Maghreb culture and French modernity with its bias and challenges. This culture which is characterized by its young members are less educated, more unemployed, and more biased than French natives or other ethnic minorities in France. They do not respect their parents, even less French authorities. They have created a society of their own where the law of the jungle prevails and which is eased by a diminished police presence.While President Chirac finally acknowledged this week that a “profound malaise” exists in France, a culture of the cites has been developing for the last few decades. Although the rioters’ motivations in carrying out the looting attacks vary, racism in French mainstream society alone is never the only motivating factor. Behind the attacks also lie a combination of factors: Feelings of exclusion, a copycat phenomenon throughout French cites (and some cases in other European countries), anger and hate toward any French official authority, a high rate of unemployment, and an overall invisibility in the French social and political spectrum.France needs to share and teach the history of all its population, but the National Assembly disagrees with that vision of French history. Last February, a law was passed requiring public schools to teach French colonization in a positive light. The French students in the schools’ cites might find it difficult to relate to the famous “Gallic ancestors” and listen to the greatness of the French empire, while politicians are still very reluctant to recognize the horrors committed during the Algerian war of Independence. Only six years ago did France officially recognize that it fought a war in Algeria, which it cautiously referred to until recently as “operations in North Africa.”Resolute actions must be taken if the government is to succeed in confronting the difficult reality. President Chirac has to go beyond eleventh-hour declarations and the commissioning of reports that remain unapplied. France and its current government must make up for the decades of mistakes made by previous governments – both from the left and the right – which failed to acknowledge France’s role in history, as well as to promote and integrate an immigrant population that was born in France.Ms. Beyler is a counter-terrorism consultant based in Washington, D.C.

France’s Rude Awakening

France’s Rude Awakening

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