France's Lost Territories

It started outside of Paris with the accidental deaths of two Muslim teenagers supposedly chased by French police. After what's now two weeks of violence that's spread throughout the country, about 6,200 cars have been torched and schools, gyms, malls, police stations, businesses, trains and buses have been vandalized as of when this paper goes to print. Police have been shot at in multiple instances. Two people have died, and a woman on crutches was lit on fire.

Many have explained the riots away as a revolt of young, poor and disenfranchised French Muslim citizens lashing out against a state that offers them little, thus whitewashing the extreme violence of the professional hooligans involved. Others, including The New York Times, have blamed French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy for fanning the flames by calling the rioters "scum."

Sarkozy responded in a November 4 column for Le Monde, writing that "I do not associate the thugs with the huge majority of young from the suburbs who only wish to succeed in life." He wrote about the 56-year-old man who was beaten to death in front of his wife and daughter for taking a picture and the handicapped woman who was soaked with gas and put on fire. Scum seems a fair name for those who commit such acts.

The idea that this violence erupted out of the blue is bizarre. Back in November 2004 on a Saturday evening, the suburbs' everyday violence made it to the center of Paris-to the Champs-Elysées-when two rival gangs started fighting. One gang member was stabbed in the back, and died on the spot. The day before that, a shooting in front of a mall in the suburbs gravely injured six young people in the Parisian suburb of Pantin.

The poor, mostly African and Muslim immigrant suburbs have been left to the control of violent gangs. The worst of them have become territories of their own, abandoned by cops and firemen, who've stopped responding to calls after thugs have called them in only to stone and attack them. These days, cops try to make arrests at 6 a.m., when most thugs are sleeping, in order to avoid rioting.

When the two teenagers were found dead, accidentally electrocuted while hiding from the police, who may or may not have been looking for them, the community's reaction was Biblical: "They killed one of ours, and they will pay."

Most of the time people are afraid to file complaints and even judges are routinely physically threatened by defendants. The real catastrophe is for these law-abiding citizens who are stuck in these suburbs. Mothers have had to physically fight against the thugs to gain respect because they have given up on the police (or the police on them). Most people simply buy protection.

Some commentators have been quick to accuse Islamists of organizing the riots. This is not accurate. While it is true that in some isolated cases, some rioters were heard yelling Allah Ahukbar while torching cars and throwing Molotov cocktails at the anti-riot police, this has not been the general pattern. When asked about it on November 7, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin answered that the Islamists were not the essential force between the riots. A much better source, the Renseignements Généraux-a unit of the police, which closely monitors the Islamists, the mosques and the exurban slums called banlieues, which are popualted mostly by poor Africans and Muslims-have found no Islamist hand in the latest violence.

France, though, has been undergoing a fast Islamization in the past ten years, most notably in schools. This prevents integration.

One of the main architects of this phenomenon is none other than Swiss Islamist Tariq Ramadan (now advisor to British prime minister Tony Blair on combating extremism!) who spent years in French banlieues radicalizing young French Muslims.

Second, most of the rioters and especially the gang leaders are for now secular and very materialistic, but they will most probably join the rank of jihadis within three to five years if nothing is done.

The usual scenario goes like this: either the rioters end up in jail and are easily converted right there to Radical Islam or an imam from the banlieue convinces them to join the Jihad. At first, family, friends and cops find the transformation almost miraculous. From a drug trafficker, alcohol-drinking, girl-chasing individual, the thug becomes religious, even reserved, adopts a quieter lifestyle and no longer gets in trouble with the police. But this is a transfer of violence: instead of burning cars, the youngster focuses his hatred on the West and becomes a jihadi.

It is no coincidence that scores of French citizens are in Iraq fighting coalition troops (at least half a dozen Frenchmen have died in this fashion).

One of the reasons for this worsening situation is the failure of the French government to tackle the issues at stake. Again, it's not like they popped out of the blue. Back in the 1960s Charles De Gaulle warned about the Muslim community in France: "Those who advocate integration of the Algerian Muslims have a hummingbird's brain. Try to integrate oil and vinegar. Shake the bottle. After a moment, they will once more separate. Does one really believe that the French body will be able to absorb ten million Muslims, who will be 20 million tomorrow and 40 million the day after tomorrow?"

But for 40 years, France has turned a blind eye to immigration and integration issues of its at least 6 million Muslims (figures are tough to get since France does not ask for religious affiliation in its census, but French officials have privately acknowledged that the number might be closer to 8 million). The previous prime minister, Socialist Lionel Jospin, said while in office that he did not want to read the French Police reports on the suburbs mostly populated by Muslim immigrants because they depressed him too much.

So it is no surprise that criminality, much of it concentrated in these suburbs, reached an all-time high in 2002, with 4.1 million crimes recorded. Mostly because of that, Jospin had a very poor showing in the 2002 presidential election where he did not even make it to the Second Round. In his stead was far Right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who surprised everyone by placing second with almost 20% of the vote. This was considered an earthquake, a cry for help from French voters demanding that its political leaders treat immigration and security problems with real urgency. But once more the message did not really make it to the alleys of power.

At least since 1990, the Renseignements Généraux have been reporting on a regular basis of the ever-increasing insecurity inside the banlieues. In order to tame down this looming revolt, French governments decided to throw lots of money at the banlieues through social organizations. As shown in a powerful book entitled Le Jour où la France tremblera (The day when France will shake) by Stéphane Berthomet and Guillaume Bigot, it was a catastrophic plan because in most cases the ones that profited from this money were the outlaws themselves. They understood the rules of the game: riots mean television cameras, cameras mean pressure on City Hall which in turn means subventions. And that's exactly what de Villepin offered.

This time it would be wise to monitor where the money goes and reward the good social organizations. In the past, when governments have allocated money to improve the quality of life of the people in the suburbs, the degradation and destruction of these improvements was almost immediate. Though these suburbs are poor, keep in mind that France is one of the most social countries in the world: free health, free school and universities, generous unemployment subsidies and large families subsidies. In light of all this, what's the government to do?

The policy of benign neglect and Munich-like appeasement has backfired.

So, first restore law and order and repossess these lost territories: The imposition of the martial law on November 8 is a first constructive step, albeit a very late one. Second, rid the banlieues of the gangs and culture of fear by opening police stations in each of the banlieues. Third, provide security, dignity and regain the trust of the honest people living in the banlieues by being responsive and just there for them, protecting witnesses and judges. Fourth, tackle the real problems linked to immigration: from unemployment to genuine integration.

One of the best ways to succeed is through education. The State has to regain a footing in the battleground of the schools in order to form a new generation of assimilated and law-abiding French citizens.

This is no easy task. Not only are young Muslims rebelling against the French authorities but also they are also sometimes falling into the arms of Islamic radicals whose goal is to turn France into an Islamic state. This must be achieved, though-at stake is the survival of France as a free and secure democratic nation.

If the current government does not succeed in clamping down on the gangs and offering solutions, then French voters might turn to the far-Right demagogue Jean-Marie Le Pen when they go to the polls in 2007 to elect a new president.