Unlike Greg, I don't have any deep thoughts on what's currently happening in France yet and was probably one the of the more reluctant to draw any deep-seated conclusions about the situation until the bomb factory came to light. I'm still rather reluctant to argue that this whole thing was orchestrated by some sinister hand, in large part because I have a lot of respect for French counter-terrorism authorities. If the GSPC or the GICM (Algerian and Moroccan al-Qaeda affiliates that are the most likely ringleaders if this was in fact pre-planned) had something this big in the works, I can't believe they would be able to pull it off without the French authorities getting wind of it.
Another point that I sort of mentioned here (see also Colt's explanation) is that while all the media accounts to date have shown what looks rather disturbing like the beginning of the Intifada, there hasn't been anything as far as a comparable death toll is concerned even though the authorities still appear unable to contain the situation. Given New Orleans's brief transformation into Somalia not so long ago with a far higher body count than anything France has produced to date and what that must have looked like to foreigners, I think a healthy note of prudence is called for here.
Also, and I really hate to be the one to say it, but some of the snarkiness really isn't helpful. Yes, we can argue that this represents a complete failure of the French welfare state model, cynical French foreign policy allegedly aimed at placating at least non-North African terrorist groups, the issue of assimilating large Muslim immigrant populations into Europe, or all of the above, but at the same time let us be clear that if the absolute worst-case projections are true and we start seeing some of the Islamist "peculiar institutions" like beheadings, throwing acid on unveiled women, sha'riah courts, and the like springing up in the heart of Europe the way they have in insurgent zones in Iraq that this is a really, really bad thing for everyone, particularly given that the riots now seem to be spreading to Muslim immigrant communities in other European countries.
One thing that may be helpful, however, is this excellent primer on Islam in France by Jean-Yves Camus. It's extremely detailed and lays out the French Muslim denominations in painstaking detail (and if there are equivalent studies to other parts of Europe and the United States, I'd be very interested in seeing them) from the followers of the Muslim equivalents of "state churches" of Algeria, Morocco, and Turkey to the Sufi orders to the Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist movements.
The groups in particular that bear keeping an eye on are as follows:
Tabligh Jamaat (Jama'a at-Tabligh)
While I know that there's still an argument as to what extent they're affiliated with terrorist organizations, at a minimum they have served as gateways to such organizations in the past. Moreover, as most French Muslims are of North African ancestry, their activities in the Sahel region may also be of some concern.
From my summary of the ICG report on terrorism in the Sahel region of Africa, specifically Mali:
* Northern Mali, as well as northern Nigeria, is regarded as the most likely locations for a terrorist base in all of North Africa by US and European intelligence even though the country is one of the most in the Sahel with a thriving democracy. Al-Qaeda operatives scouting out the country as a possible safe haven for Osama bin Laden, the upsurge in Tablighi activity in recent years, and the construction of a luxury hotel in the north by Abdul Qadeer Khan may not be related, but combined with the GSPC presence in the region they have both been enough to frighten the Malian military and worry Western intelligence analysts. The GSPC, Tablighi missionaries, and the North African smuggling networks all intersect in Kidal, the headquarters of the Tuareg rebellion that should be more properly described as dormant than dead.
- Kidal has been the seat of the Tuareg rebellion in the 1960s and the 1990s, having been controlled by the ruling Ifoghas faction during the latter period. Most of the Tuareg in this region are less intermixed with Arabs than those in Timbuktu and have been more recently converted to Islam. As there is little tradition of Islamic scholarship among them, the Tablighi are able to poselytize virtually unopposed and have done so ever since 1992 under the auspices of 400-2,000 Pakistani, Gulf Arab, Egyptian, and Chadian missionaries.
- Since 1997, the Tablighis have focused on Kidal and has successfully converted the ruling Ifoghas faction. Kidal's mayor is now Tablighi, as is the Tuareg leader Inta'la who is the real power there. Iyad, the former head of the Tuareg rebellion, is now the spiritual leader of the Malian Tablighis and spent 6 months in Pakistan in 2004 at a Tablighi retreat.
- Western and Malian intelligence agencies are convincing that the Tablighis have targeted the Ifoghas for conversion, focusing on Inta'la in particular for more than 2 years before he finally converted. The question is why, and to date there doesn't seem to be satisfactory answer, anymore than there is as to why a missionary organization is using false documents to bring Pakistani preachers into the country.
- The Tablighi interest in the Tuareg regions of northern Mali is complicated when one considers the GSPC presence in the region. In 2003-2004, the GSPC was active as far south as Lere near the Mauritanian border and the Paris-Dakar rally route had to be changed for fear of them. GSPC leaders married Tuareg women and met with other Algerian Salafists at water points along the desert. The rather mysterious Tablighi leader in Kidal, a young man whom no Tablighi will discuss or even name, may also be linked to the GSPC.
- The GSPC's ability to operate in southern Algeria and northern Mali requires some degree of support and fear from the local population, but it also requires cash. This comes mainly from the hostage ransom they received from the German government as well as their ties to the local smuggling cartels. Cigarrette smuggling is the biggest traffic in the region and they are smuggled from Zerouate in Mauritania to Kidal in big trucks and containers, from which they are divided up into smaller amounts and taken to Algeria in Toyota Land Cruisers. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a GSPC leader, is the smuggling kingpin of the region, though he is now believed to be more focused on his business interests. He has been seen frequently in Kidal since 1997, though he has not reappeared there in nearly a year and was last seen at the Algerian border with Niger in August 2004.
- While Belmokhtar is tied to al-Qaeda and a GSPC leader, he is far more preoccupied with his role as the region's preeminent smuggling chief. The GSPC members in Kidal are not smugglers, though they do tax all of Belmokhtar's traffic that comes from Mali into Algeria. Other illegal activities that Belmokhtar is engaged in include people and gas smuggling, both of which are aided by the fact that Mali maintains no border posts with Algeria or military presence in the north under the agreement that ended the Tuareg rebellion.
- Northern Mali is also awash with small arms, some used by farmers and others by former rebels. In 2003, a Malian army garrison was severely punished by the government when it was learned that most of its armory had been sold on the private market.
- The US government believes that the links between the Tablighis and the GSPC, the GSPC and al-Qaeda threaten to transform northern Mali into an Islamist stronghold that would also serve as a terrorist haven. Wahhabism has been present in northern Mali for at least 70 years, but there have been no resulting problems of violence or terrorism. The GSPC has used the German ransom money to buy good will as well as weapons from the Tuareg tribal leaders and used the prospect of wealth to recruit young Tuaregs into the organization. Anti-government resentment lingering from the 1990s rebellion also serve to make many Tuaregs receptive to the GSPC cause.
As with all of these groups, I have no idea if the Tabligh Jamaat is even involved in the riots or to what extent, but this is just something to keep in mind.
French Wahhabis and Salafists
From Camus's study:
The non-jihadist Salafi follow the teachings of the Saudi ulemas from Mecca and Medina Universities, notably the late saudi Great Mufti, Abdulaziz Ibn Baz and the late sheikh Mohamed Nasiruddin al Albani, and also sheikh Abubakr al Jezairi, whose book, “La Voie du Musulman” (The Moslem Way) has been translated into French and is commom reading among the adepts. In 2003, it is believed that around 20 mosques in the country are run by the Salafi, most of them in Paris and suburbs, one in Roubaix (the Dawa mosque) and one in Venissieux, near Lyon.The area around Lille and Roubaix, in northern France, has been a fertile recruiting ground for those who wanted to fight the jihad abroad: in January, 1996,the so-called “Roubaix gang” was dismantled by the police, and it is now certain that this group of former Bosnia fighters, which financed its activities from robberies, was an Al Qaida cell. As for the Lyon area,it is also a hotbed of terrorist-related activity: among the sons of the imam of the Abu Bakr mosque in Venissieux, Chellali Benchellali, an Algerian, one, Mourad, is detained in Guantanamo and fought alongside the Taleban, and the other, Menad, was arrested in December 2002 when a cell thought to be linked to the Abu Doha network was dismantled near Paris. Furthermore, several relatives of Nizar Nawar, the Tunisian born perpetrator of the attack on the Djerba synagogue (April 2002) were also arrested in the vicinity of Lyon.
The growth of the Salafi movement is undoubtedly the most preoccupying development in French Islam, because of the possibility that followers of a non-jihadist sheikh may later switch to radical, armed groups. The method of the Salafi in order to take control of a mosque is always the same: it begins with a small cell of adepts praying with the others and trying to rally them to their point of view, until they either become the majority, or until the majority, tired of their relentless arguing, verbal abuse and sometimes physical threats, go to another place.
On December 21st, 2002, one case of physical abuse was reported at the Omar mosque in Paris, when a group of salafi extorted money from the “zakat” (the equivalent of tsedaka) and threatened imam Hammami until the police arrested two of them, Karim Bourti, a member of the algerian Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC), and his accomplice, a convert named Rudy Terranova. Therefore, police surveillance of those mosques with a salafi orientation has become a priority. The few openly Salafi mosques often invite Moslem scholars from Saudi Arabia to give lectures and hold tests in order to select students who will be given a grant to study in Mecca or Medina Universities.
Among the leading prayer rooms associated with the movement are: the Centre Socio-Culturel Islamique in Longjumeau, who received sheikh Abdoul Malik Ramadani al-Jazairi and the Ulema Falih Ibn Nafi al Harbi from Saudi Arabia in February-March 2002; the Asslam mosque in Argenteuil and at the Al Ihsen mosque in the same city, where in May 2001,the radical sheikh from Jordan, Salim Hilali, and another one from Egypt, Abdellatif Mahmud Ali Osama, preached the Jihad both in and outside of Europe to an overall audience of 2000,including members of the GSPC. According to Ali Laidi, following those preaches, several young Muslims from the nearby city of Sartrouville left for Yemen. In the same area, west of Paris, the salafi convened another week of predication in June 2001, at the Sartrouville mosque, under the aegis of the Saudi al Haramein Foundation. East of Paris, the salafi control one mosque in Stains, one in rue Broussais in Vitry sur Seine, and the Association culturelle de la Rose des Vents in Aulnay sous Bois, which on 10-26 july 2001, hosted a course with an overall attendence of 500, during which Medina University recruiters were present, as well as two teachers from there, Abdallah al Boukhari and Salih Az Zouaydi, and one from Oumm oul-Qoura (Mecca) University, Muhammad Bazmoul.
I would be extremely interesting if someone could correspond the locations of the riots to those areas where Wahhabi and Salafist congregations are known to be active.
Misc.
Camus also notes that the German-based (and imprisoned, unless he's out of jail again) Turkish cleric Metin Kaplan, who has also been tied to al-Qaeda by US and Turkish authorities, also has followers in France:
In the Paris and Alsace areas, the two strongholds of Turkish immigration, the Milli Görus movement, which is close to the Islamic party now in power in Ankara, is also active under the name Tendance nationale-Union islamique en France, or in Turkish, Islam Toplumu Milli Görus (TNUIF). There is also a branch of the so-called “kaplanji” radical movement, by the name of its leader Metin Kaplan, now jailed in Germany, where the group is banned, for having ordered the murder of its rival within the movement. It operates under the name Association Islamique en France and is originally a splinter group (1983) of Milli Görus. The group is aligned on the ideas of the Islamic Republic of Iran and once tried to reach an alliance with Al Qaida. It runs two mosques in Paris and one in Metz, and promotes the idea of “Khilafah”as well as an extremely anti-Semitic rhetoric .20
As do Takfir wal Hijra, the Palestinian terrorist groups, and Hezbollah:
Another noteworthy Islamist groups include the very secretive Takfir wal Hijra, a Sunni extremist sect with connections to the Algerian terrorist movements. As Takfir members usually consider the whole Moslem community to be “kuffar” (heretic), they live in isolation and do not attend the existing mosques, which makes it difficult to find them. A Takfir cell was believed to operate in the Yvelines département, west of Paris. At all major pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Paris, a group of about 150-200 followers of the Lebanese Hizballah have appeared, as did some individuals waving posters of Hamas leader Shaykh Ahmed Yassin and shouting slogans such as “Jews to the ovens” or “Jews are the enemies of humanity.”These groups are well organized and structured: the use of cellular phones is common for contact between cells, and senior members protect their identities behind aliases when speaking to each other. Most followers are aged between 16 and 30 and are French-born citizens, originating from the eastern or northern suburbs or eastern boroughs of Paris. While their knowledge of Islam is limited (a majority are “born-again Moslems”), most seem to have mastered the Arabic language. Many are young educated women who are often more vociferously anti-Semitic than men. For the first time these groups have declared their ideology openly (waving the yellow Hizballah flag; calling Muslims to prayer after the demonstrations; wearing T-shirts with the slogan—in French— “Hamas: the sword of the faithful”). It is now documented that in 2002, a member of the Lebanese leadership of Hizballah was in Paris and took part in the demonstrations.
Finally, it is important to watch out for the Antwerp-based (Belgium Flanders) Arab-European League, a Hizballah-oriented militia-like group led by Lebanese-born Dyab Abu Jahjah, which has announced it would launch a French branch.
The bolded text in that second to last paragraph does seem to bring to mind some of the methods that the French authorities claim are being used to organize the riots and help them to evade police.
Conclusion
Like all European countries with sizeable Muslim communities, France has a definite problem with Islamic extremism, although here again I want to stress that whatever our problems with the government of France, their policies in dealing with such matters have been nowhere near as lax as those of the United Kingdom. Also, to the extent that there's any analysis present here at all, I want to be clear that it's entirely speculative. The French Muslim ghetto is more than capable of rioting, even in such a well-organized fashion, for reasons other than religion or religious extremism. So even as observers look into these questions, it is very important that we retain an open mind until such time as order is restored and we learn who, if at all, the people who turned the deaths of 2 petty thieves into a mass riot as the French authorities try to figure out what the heck went wrong to begin with. Until that happens though, I want to refrain from drawing any hasty conclusions.
there hasn't been anything as far as a comparable death toll is concerned [...] Given New Orleans's brief transformation into Somalia not so long ago with a far higher body count than anything France has produced to date
Maybe because we usually do not have access to the same kind of weaponry.
even though the authorities still appear unable to contain the situation
Maybe because authorities simply do not want to tackle it.
It is said that Chirac, who was missing for ten days, wants to end the political career of Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister and a favourite among the French Right, and promote the infamous edulcorated Villepin. Possibly, he also does not want to adopt a tough line against Muslims after being politically at their side in Iraq.
If Sarkozy holds on, as it seems he is doing. His tough speech (calling the Arab insurgency scum and criminals, which is what they are) will finally have an impact on the French public opinion and he will reinforce his position for candidate to the Presidency of the Republic.
Possibly aplying a severe curfew, with some help of military units (as it happened in New Orleans) the situation could be contained, but as I said, this tough line is only supported by Sarkozy.
hmmm...it seems as if this started as a few flash mobs, emergent rioting behavior of a particular kind. but the criminal elements (ganstas and radical religieuses) are opportunistically exploiting events, and forming weak, temporary control networks.
I think it is premature to call it an intifada or the beginnings of eurabia. Not enough voters yet in the insurgent sub-population.
But enough critical mass to force the sociogenisis of riot behavior. Not enough to demand and negotiate concessions.
My prediction is that this will go underground in response to curfews and martial law, and form an excellent substrate for nourishing future "real" terrorists, ones with training and organization. should be a giant headache for les francaises in the future.
but the criminal elements (ganstas and radical religieuses) are opportunistically exploiting events
And politicians, as it occurred in Spain and it would happen in Italy, if an Islamic terrorist attack is carried out there.
The people and political class in the UK are far more advanced.
Not enough voters yet in the insurgent sub-population.
6 million. 10% of the French population.
My prediction is that this will go underground in response to curfews and martial law...
It might go, but tackling of street violence performed mainly by youths in the Basque country shows the contrary. ETA used to train and evaluate its new members in street fighting. It was its recruitment agency, let's say.
In addition, the pressure the German Polizei exerted on Neo-nazi youth groups during the late 1990's did not yield the formation of any terrorist group. On the contrary, it proved succesful in stopping them.
This is Intifada writ large. The coming of Eurabia. Bat Ye'or, Oriana Fallaci, Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji have warned of this. Theo Van Gogh tried to point out the dangers but people like Greg ignored the warning, denied the danger. Fortuyn attempted to sound the alarm and the appeasers sought to quiet his voice. The martyrs of 9-11, 3-11, 7-7, and all the victims of the foul stink of jihad cry out to anyone who will listen to wake up. Paris is only a foretaste.
I can't believe they would be able to pull it off without the French authorities getting wind of it.
Do the French authorities keep track of the activities of supposedly non-violent Islamic supremacist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb-ut-Tahrir?
H-u-T is rarely overtly violent. Their tactic seems to be "let's you and him fight".
The Muslim Brotherhood are also 'peaceful' supporters of totalitarian aparheid sharia laws. If these peaceful groups were involved in the riots, it's not clear that the police would know about it, since they stayed out of those neighborhoods.
I disagree with your conclusion that the riots in France are unorganized and unreleated by comparing them in terms of deaths in New Orleans. True so far the riots have been targeted at bruning of cars and few incedents of violence one guy beat up one woman burnt on shoot out with police. Whereas New Orleans had large numbers of looting burning everything murder rape shoot outs with everyone from the eachother, police, rescuerers, even guard. However my conclusion is opposite of yours the fact that random riots are somehow seem to be rioting under a rules of engagement like burn only cars, dont shoot maim or kill in France is not likly to be acheived without some type of organization from somewere. New Orleans was random unorganized obvious by the fact of the choas some burned buildings some cars some shot rescuerers some shot police some raped some robbed people or homes no order no rules of engagment. In France thier is a strong sence of organization and definate rules of engagement with the limit of attacks on cars.
And to a interview with the police union in France that said from experience they knew the Muslims had weapons but so far they werent being used but he expected that to change. Why would everyone in random riots every little criminal set or group decide to leave the guns at home yet go burn cars risking arrest for what? their is no money in burning cars or is thier money coming from somewere. In Iraq the roadside bombs are a buisness not so much ideology run enterprise.
mary:
I have a fairly low opinion of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which I believe is discussed or at least mentioned by Camus in his study of Islam in France.
C-Low:
Well, there was the incident of the guys who opened fire on the cops and injured several of them just a couple of days ago. And if there's limited rules of engagement, what's the goal? So far the rioters don't seem to have issued any specific list of demands near as I can tell.
Your comments about New Orleans are out of line. Most if not all of the stories about the situation in New Orleans reported by the MSM were found to be false. The reports of shooting at rescue helicopters were found to be people trying to attract attention to their plight(See the blog @ New Orleans Times-Picayune). Your blantant attempt to compare the situtation in New Orleans during the floods to the warfare in Somalia is out of line and borderline racist.
You owe the readers an apology and a retraction. The work you have done in the past is being trashed by your own words.
Robert M:
I knew most of the stuff about the Superdome chaos had been debunked, but I hadn't heard, nor do I expect that a lot of other people had either, that the sniper stories had been debunked. The Somalia analogy was not intended as racial so much as situational (we can pick another example of a case where law and order has collapsed involving that doesn't involve blacks if you like) and involved the use of hyperbole. I will happily apologize if the analogy offended you and retract the mention of the snipers.
I know I'm not the first person to mention this, but there seems to have been a tactical choice made to burn cars (and a few buildings), but avoid greater violence. If they were burning down houses at even a fraction of the rate cars have been destroyed, the government would have no choice but to stomp on the riots.
There are weapons more deadly than a couple of shotguns in these 'suburbs'. It reminds me of the first 'intifada', where the use of guns was prohibited in the rioting.
Thats exactly what i was thinking. Predictably the French didnt nip this thing in the bud and have allowed it to metastasize at its own pace. Had they called for a 24 curfew and brought in the local equivalent of the National Guard (as any US mayor would have done [maybe not Nagen]) at least the rioting would have been ended if not the underlying danger. Now the rioters hold the initiative and the authorities will have to escalate the violence to bring it under control.
Its a sad truth that the transnational socialist types abhor the use of violence by lawful authorities (the other side is of course never judged), and hence when they have the authority make the ultimate situation more violent by not stamping down on lawlessness immediately and convincingly. There is something to be said for one quick pull of the bandaid.
"Your comments about New Orleans are out of line. Most if not all of the stories about the situation in New Orleans reported by the MSM were found to be false. The reports of shooting at rescue helicopters were found to be people trying to attract attention to their plight(See the blog @ New Orleans Times-Picayune). Your blantant attempt to compare the situtation in New Orleans during the floods to the warfare in Somalia is out of line and borderline racist.
You owe the readers an apology and a retraction. The work you have done in the past is being trashed by your own words."
I concur.
Furthermore, my understanding was that in the aftermath of Katrina, there was no evidence of a large wave of murders. There were a handful, but that number was no higher than the admittedly New Orleans would usually see in an equivalent period of time and no evidence that they were anything other than ordinary crime. So from what do you get the phrase 'far higher body count'? Six murders in NO compared to (at least) two in Paris (four if we count the two dead French youths that started all this)? Or are you trying to draw a comparison between the deaths caused by a natural disaster and the deaths caused by rioting?
It you must make a comparison to violent US rioting, why don't you resort to something a) that was real and not merely sensationalism, c) had comparable causes, and c) a riot that actually caused significant loss of life like say the 1992 Rodney King riots in LA which killed 52. That would be a valid comparison. Continuing to spread misinformation and misconceptions about what actually went on in NO make you look like a typical victim of MSM group think, something that in the past WoC has been careful to avoid.
celebrim:
As noted in #12, I myself was ignorant that the sniper reports had been debunked until Robert M mentioned it to me, which is why I referenced them in my post. As for New Orleans vs. France, it still seems to me as though there was more violence in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina and the breakdown of law and order than there currently is in France, perhaps because in the case of latter the malcontents in question are thinking strategically as others have noted above.
The 1992 LA riots would indeed have been a better example and I apologize for not choosing a more apt example.
"...perhaps because in the case of latter the malcontents in question are thinking strategically as others have noted above."
The claims about widespread violence had been I thought throughly debunked in the blogosphere. I would have thought you were aware of that. However, I'll drop that subject for now and comment on the idea that there is strategic thinking going on.
I don't think that there is, or at least, I don't think that it is the sort of rational planning that people are seeing in it. Speaking as a former member of a street gang and a frequent victim and occasional purveyor of teenage violence, I think that there is something more basic going on. I think that the young men involved in the violence understand that there are some unwritten rules in how they interact with the police. There are things that they know that they can get away with, things which they do which they know will be tolerated to a certain extent. I think that the kids are consciously or unconsciously adherring to these 'rules of the street', knowing that so long as they do so the police will meet thier violence with only equivalent violence. They know so long as they don't represent a murderous threat, that the police will respond to thier baseball bats, knives, and pick axes with riot sticks, shields, and tear gas. So long as its simply thier primordal human melee combat versus the police's primordal melee combat - so long as the fight stays basically non-lethal - the rumble stays 'fun'. I think what you are seeing is the street gang equivalent of, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye." The worst that can happen is they get hauled off to the clink for a few months - after which they can return to thier mates and wear the jail term like a badge of honor.
But if they cross the line, then they know that the tacit understanding they have with the police about the rules of engagement will break down. And at some level they are aware (or at least believe) that they cannot win a cycle of escalating violence with the police. Heaven help France if they decide otherwise.
I think that those ROEs exists, celebrim, and they are followed not only by Muslims, but by all kinds of French protesters. It is a way of obtaining something (usually a subvention) from the State.
By the way, one Rule Of Engament is that the farmers may assault McDonald's, which represent branches of globalization in the middle of France.
celebrim:
They probably have been, but I was too angry from first the initial coverage and then learning that most of the Superdome chaos was bunk to follow it as much as I probably should have. By the time most of the debunking was probably taking place, I was probably already trying to follow other stuff to, ironically enough, take my mind off New Orleans.
That taken care of, I think you're probably right about tolerance to this stuff at a local level, but I think that things have now progressed well beyond that point given the degree to which this is no longer a local but rather a national issue. As J Aguilar notices, there seem to be a kind of unspoken rules of engagement for protests in Europe, but since everybody here seems to agree that we moved beyond this being protests some time ago, the question then becomes how and to what degree they apply to riots.
New Orleans and LA were/are fundamentally different from Paris. In the American cases you saw the collapse of law and order, and widespread looting by nearly everyone for "free stuff" and the setting of fires AFTER to cover the looting. There were also settling of scores; and in the case of LA considerable deaths as looters came into close contact with ordinary people such as Reginald Denny who had the wrong (white or asian) race.
In Paris organized efforts to burn down schools, police stations, government offices and the like point to a definite political aim of erasing the French state from areas controlled by the rioters.
The debunking of the New Orleans violence has now been debunked. So the original stories of post-Katrina violence are now back in play. The reason for that is that New Orleans police were AWOL and not available to document the very real violence that occurred. As order slowly returned to the city, and eyewitness accounts were finally correlated, it is found that the scattered violence when taken as a whole was significant in scale.
but...Dan's comparison is viable if you consider that rioting seems to be emergent behavior in non-assimilated sub-populations. Poor black americans in the case of of Katrina, or Watts, or LA, or Toledo, poor black muslim "youths" in france.
Interestingly, the US has trying to assimilate blacks with some degree of success for 140 years. The french have made little effort to assimilate their muslim population, preferring ghettoization, but the results are in some sense the same. Assimilation is difficult and very slow, even with the best of intentions.
Dan, those rules are not European wide. France ROE are just a bit South Korean. Don't forget that it is normal in France to have small scale riots in the banlieu, that in a normal weekend 100 cars are firebombed and that strikers do treaten to blow up their chemical plant to get their way.
The rioters want to get concessions from the state so it is not weird that they attack state symbols. If it is smart to do it is the question but IMNSHO violence is only thing the French state listen to if you aren't well connected
#19
Apartheid is the complete opposite of integration. The US only tried to integrate the slave decendends for the last 60 years or so and assimilation isn't slow but it just takes between 70 and 90 years to filter through
Dan
I would guess the goal of the France situation 3 old=
1) put the fear of God into the local population after all this is the definition of terrorism
2) Test the Gov reaction and limits of how far can push
3) gain knowledge of the French counter procedures,reaction times, type of forces, operations, tactics ect... very valuable for the real game later down the road
Total personal Guess following: I personally feel that these riots are really a message to the French gov about thier recent moves side by side with the Big Satan on Syria and even Iran not to mention their own style 9-11 crack down on Radicals. The message is from Iran (they have often claimed that they have agents everywere and would strike world wide if... some say that is bluster but Iranian refugees live all over the world they have co-opted terrorist groups that have presence all over the world and I think its at least partially true and I imagine a handfull of guys with suitcases of money for burnt cars would go along way. Is this what is going down?? I dont know time will tell.
The Racism/work/poor/blah blah blah LLL line is old and worn out. Besides look here in the states when such have happened on like reasons the level of violence and objectives, damages, are as diverse as every 5man set and person running around. Looting here, burning building here, cars thier, steeling cars here, mugging, racial attacks ect... a variety not just burning cars. Iran should not be understood I think what I could do with just 100 guys and a supply of money supplies the damage that could be done to any western nation. Iran with terrorist operatives could do huge amounts of damage and havoc if provoked.
More giveaways wont fix this, simple fact the west needs to remember and relearn a people that come to a new country to become one of thier citizens should strive to become one with that nation if that involves changing dress and daily habits, customs, language that is part of the price of leaving home. Immigrants are supposed to merge in the, only time the opposite happens is called Invasion, Occupation, Colonialism by a foriegn nation.