SADDAM'S BITCH:

Chirac basks in hero status but his country is losing its way: He has defied Washington and charmed Algeria, but, asks Rob Parsons in Paris, is the French president about to back down on his principles? (Rob Parsons, 3/09/03, Sunday Herald)

He is acclaimed in north Africa as anti-Bush, anti-America and pro- Saddam. Not quite the image he wants to convey to Washington, of course, but a useful counterweight to the notion, widespread in the Muslim world, that US policy towards Iraq is part of a Christian crusade against Islam.

But reality was an intrusive, if unwelcome guest, at the party. France has the largest Muslim population in Europe and it is growing fast and immigration is a hot political issue. While Chirac was in Algiers, the French town of Nimes was convulsed by violence. Gangs of youths ran riot after the police shot dead a 17-year-old man of north African descent. Shops were burnt and looted, a police car was shot at.

There are more than two million Algerians in France. Last year, almost 200,000 more got visas to enter the country. The demand is ever growing. Wherever he went, Chirac was greeted by chants of 'Vi -- sas! Vi -- sas!'

But France is shutting its doors. While Chirac spoke in Algiers of opening frontiers, his ambitious interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, was tightening down the hatches and sending refugees home. This is a country that is no longer sure of its place and role in the world. France is bewildered by the pace of change, by globalisation, the evolution of the EU and the ebbing power and significance of national institutions.

The French are disturbed by the speed of demographic change and worried that the enlargement of the EU into Central and Eastern Europe will bring them no good. They fear that it will mean the end of the rural France that has so shaped the nation's identity -- the notion of La France profonde. Without the agricultural subsidies of CAP, the depopulation of the countryside will gather pace.

In last year's elections, the far-right National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, shocked the country and its political establishment by winning almost 20% of the vote in the first round . Of course, Le Pen's followers included the fascist bully-boys that make up the far-right all over Europe, but they were a minority. Most of those who marched behind his banners came from middle-class, rural and artisan France.

After Chirac's crushing victory in the second round, he sent his ministers on a fact-finding mission to the provinces to discover why Le Pen did well. There were no surprises: insecurity, a decline in law and order and fears of a dilution of national identity.

Given how dependent the French are on government, their chronic bigotry, and the economic decline (from an already low point) that lies ahead, it is fairly easy to imagine them sliding into an exterminationist fascism of the kind that they at least partially embraced after being defeated by Hitler. But this time the boxcars headed East will be carrying Muslims, rather than Jews. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2003 10:44 PM