THE QUAGMIRE THAT'S A BREEDING GROUND FOR TERROR:

Rioters Attack Trains, Schools and Businesses in the Paris Suburbs: Villepin Urges 'Return to Calm,' but Government Offers No Plan to End Violence (Molly Moore, November 4, 2005, Washington Post)

The street rampage of angry youths continued to expand across immigrant-dominated suburbs of Paris Thursday, with gangs attacking commuter trains, elementary schools and businesses in an eighth night of violence, according to local police officials.

French government leaders met in emergency sessions for a second day but again failed to agree on how to stem the violence.

Being French, the pols see it as an opportunity to hurt Sarkozy, not a serious problem for what's left of their society.

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Riots Put a Fear in the French: With clashes ongoing in largely Muslim suburbs of Paris, officials deploy 1,000 police in hopes of reining in restive Arab and African youths. (Sebastian Rotella, November 4, 2005, LA Times)

Violent disturbances are nothing new in the bleak public housing projects on the urban periphery, where intelligence officials say that the two most powerful social forces are the drug underworld and Islamic activism. Even minor incidents pitting police against youths periodically set off arson attacks on cars and assaults on symbols of the state: postal workers, firefighters, day-care centers.

But the current rioting has lasted longer than in the past and spread alarmingly, authorities say, because of accumulated frustration and tension and incitement by small-time gangsters trying to reassert control over turf. Although Islamic extremism is seen as a serious problem in some of the affected neighborhoods, there is no indication that fundamentalist leaders have encouraged the unrest, officials say.

This week's events have been "extraordinary," said a police intelligence chief who oversees a number of hot spots. "The global situation has been extremely difficult in the slums, even if a lot of people didn't realize that. There has been a convergence of unfortunate events. And now you have the kingpins who are pushing kids to go out and destroy. The kingpins know we need calm to fight the underworld economy."

The chief precipitating event for the riots came Oct. 27 in the town of Clichy-sous-Bois when two teenagers died by electrocution while hiding from police in an electrical substation. One youth was of Tunisian descent, and the other was born in Mauritania. The two were at a soccer game when police arrived; the teenagers reportedly fled to the fatal hiding place, though investigators say police were not chasing them. Nonetheless, neighborhood youths began setting fires, destroying property and attacking police and firefighters.

On the same day the teenagers died, police in nearby Epinay arrested three men who allegedly beat a visiting photographer to death. The man worked for a lighting company and had stopped his car at a housing project to take pictures of light fixtures when he was assaulted in front of his family, police said.

The incident contributed to generalized tension, the intelligence official said. So did a visit Oct. 26 to the gritty town of Argenteuil by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, part of the popular leader's campaign to take back poor areas with tough policing.

A group of youths clashed with Sarkozy's entourage and threw objects at him, an incident instigated partly by known Islamic fundamentalists, the intelligence official said. The minister responded by calling his antagonists "thugs."

Because of that comment and similar language after the riots began, Sarkozy has found himself in the spotlight. Residents of affected areas have alternately taken his words as an insult and a challenge. A youth in hard-hit Aulnay-sous-Bois told Le Monde newspaper this week: "This is just the start. We aren't going to stop until Sarkozy resigns."

Sarkozy is part of De Villepin's center-right government, but they are longtime rivals and presidential hopefuls. Despite their promises to work together, Liberation newspaper calls their shadow feud over the riots a "gang fight in the government."

Azouz Begag, the Cabinet minister for equal opportunity, accused Sarkozy of pouring gasoline on the flames with his combative language and televised forays onto rough turf.

Urging Sarkozy to avoid "warlike semantics," Begag said: "He needs to stop going with cameras and journalists to poor and sensitive areas."

Sarkozy's allies retorted that Begag acted as a proxy for De Villepin in attacking Sarkozy, who has taken credit for lowering the crime rate during two tenures as interior minister. Sarkozy insisted this week that the response to riots should be law and order, not polite language.

"If someone shoots at the police, he is not a 'youth,' he is a thug," Sarkozy declared.

Despite France's extensive social welfare programs and emphasis on civil rights, the weeklong tumult reiterates the persistent difficulties of integrating a predominantly Muslim minority beset by unemployment, crime and identity crisis.

"There's a gap between what the politicians say and reality," said Abd al Malik, a writer and rap artist who grew up in a housing project after his parents emigrated from the Republic of Congo. "Even the most banal incident can be a trigger because people are so frustrated. They are told this is their home, but they don't feel it is their home.

"The government has to convince them that the Republic accepts them, that they are French. There has to be a real profound effort, because this has the potential to become really dramatic."

Muslims make up close to 10% of France's population, but the children and grandchildren of immigrants feel woefully unrepresented.

French riots spread beyond Paris (BBC, 11/04/05)

The violence that has wracked Paris suburbs over the past week has spread to new areas and outside the capital for the first time.

French youths set alight buildings and burned more than 500 vehicles in the eighth consecutive night of rioting. Nearly 80 arrests were made in Paris.

Cars were torched in the eastern city of Dijon, and sporadic unrest broke out in southern and western France.

In Paris suburbs, anger won't cool (Katrin Bennhold, NOVEMBER 4, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

Talk to people outside the Bilal mosque in this rundown suburb north of Paris and they will tell you what has gone wrong: why rioters for the past week have confronted the police in overnight bursts of anger in the streets, torching cars, hurling rocks and even firing bullets in the worst civil disobedience in France in more than a decade.

Beyond the poverty and despair of life in the shoddy immigrant communities ringing the shining French capital, local Muslims say, there is no one left with any sway over the rioting youths. Parents, the police and the government have all lost touch, they say. [...]

In Clichy-sous-Bois on Thursday afternoon, outside the entrance of the Bilal mosque - a converted warehouse where a tear-gas grenade landed on Sunday, stoking fury against the police - celebrations of the end of the monthlong Ramadan fast were overshadowed by the widening disturbances.

Opinions about the riots among people gathered at the mosque differed, but everyone from the deputy imam to local council workers and men leaving the midday prayer agreed that the trouble has been compounded by a vacuum of moral authority.

Hardly surprising when the essence of secular rationalism is that no one and nothing has moral authority. Welcome to the world the Brights want.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 4, 2005 6:50 AM