Paris is Burning

There seems to be something nasty going on in Paris right now:

"Order and justice will be the final word in our country," said Villepin, who met with top Cabinet ministers and mayors from the affected communities. "The return to calm and the restoration of public order are the priority, our absolute priority."

But after dusk fell Thursday, new outbreaks took place in half a dozen communities in the heavily industrial, immigrant-dominated area north of Paris. Five police officers were injured by projectiles, and cars and buses were torched and vandalized, authorities reported.

The violence seemed less intense than the previous night, when hundreds of young men rampaged in 20 working-class communities that are a few miles north of the Paris city limits, but a world away from the capital's glittering tourist attractions.

Police made more than 41 arrests early Thursday morning and Thursday night. Shots were fired at police in four locations late Wednesday and early Thursday, an unusual occurrence in France, but no one was hit, authorities said. Two firefighters were injured Thursday during the clashes. Traffic was interrupted on a commuter rail line to Charles De Gaulle International Airport northeast of the city early Thursday morning after rioters hurled rocks at two trains.

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 main spark 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-sur-Seine 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 aggressive 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 Villepin's center-right government, but they are longtime rivals and presidential hopefuls. Despite their promises to work together, Liberation newspaper describes their shadow feud over the riots as 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 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 plagued by unemployment, crime and identity crisis.

Donklephant points out a 3 year old City Journal article which may shed some light on the problems facing the French:

I first saw l’insécurité for myself about eight months ago. It was just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, in a neighborhood where a tolerably spacious apartment would cost $1 million. Three youths—Rumanians—were attempting quite openly to break into a parking meter with large screwdrivers to steal the coins. It was four o’clock in the afternoon; the sidewalks were crowded, and the nearby cafés were full. The youths behaved as if they were simply pursuing a normal and legitimate activity, with nothing to fear.

Eventually, two women in their sixties told them to stop. The youths, laughing until then, turned murderously angry, insulted the women, and brandished their screwdrivers. The women retreated, and the youths resumed their “work.”

A man of about 70 then told them to stop. They berated him still more threateningly, one of them holding a screwdriver as if to stab him in the stomach. I moved forward to help the man, but the youths, still shouting abuse and genuinely outraged at being interrupted in the pursuit of their livelihood, decided to run off. But it all could have ended very differently.

Several things struck me about the incident: the youths’ sense of invulnerability in broad daylight; the indifference to their behavior of large numbers of people who would never dream of behaving in the same way; that only the elderly tried to do anything about the situation, though physically least suited to do so. Could it be that only they had a view of right and wrong clear enough to wish to intervene? That everyone younger than they thought something like: “Refugees . . . hard life . . . very poor . . . too young to know right from wrong and anyway never taught . . . no choice for them . . . punishment cruel and useless”? The real criminals, indeed, were the drivers whose coins filled the parking meters: were they not polluting the world with their cars?

Another motive for inaction was that, had the youths been arrested, nothing would have happened to them. They would have been back on the streets within the hour. Who would risk a screwdriver in the liver to safeguard the parking meters of Paris for an hour?

The laxisme of the French criminal justice system is now notorious. Judges often make remarks indicating their sympathy for the criminals they are trying (based upon the usual generalizations about how society, not the criminal, is to blame); and the day before I witnessed the scene on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, 8,000 police had marched to protest the release from prison on bail of an infamous career armed robber and suspected murderer before his trial for yet another armed robbery, in the course of which he shot someone in the head. Out on bail before this trial, he then burgled a house. Surprised by the police, he and his accomplices shot two of them dead and seriously wounded a third. He was also under strong suspicion of having committed a quadruple murder a few days previously, in which a couple who owned a restaurant, and two of their employees, were shot dead in front of the owners’ nine-year-old daughter.

...

[Regarding an attempted break-in of a parked but occupied car] As for the police, he added, they did not want to make an arrest in a case like this. There would be too much paperwork. And even if the case came to court, the judge would give no proper punishment. Moreover, such an arrest would retard their careers. The local police chiefs were paid by results—by the crime rates in their areas of jurisdiction. The last thing they wanted was for policemen to go around finding and recording crime.

...

A kind of anti-society has grown up in them—a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, “official,” society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust—greater than any I have encountered anywhere else in the world, including in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid years—is written on the faces of the young men, most of them permanently unemployed, who hang out in the pocked and potholed open spaces between their logements. When you approach to speak to them, their immobile faces betray not a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity; they make no gesture to smooth social intercourse. If you are not one of them, you are against them.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that unemployment rates for 21-29 year olds in these areas is above 30%.  They live on the dole for very long periods, which both reinforces an angry dependency and gives them time to engage in agitation.  One of the reasons Muslim fundamentalists were allowed to do so much in France is because they were one of the few forces that could control the immigrant ghettos.  At this point they have either lost control, chose not to exercise it, or are encouraging the violence a la Fallujah-in-Europe. 

There appears to be an interesting parallel between Israel and France in the way perceptions of "provocation" are used as a justification for violence.  If statements like, "I use real words. When someone shoots at policemen, he is not just a ‘youth’, he is a lout, full stop," count as provocation it is a wonder that US cities aren't in a state of perpetual riot.  Furthermore, the rioting began in response to two men who were electrocuted while they thought they were hiding from the police, even though the police weren't searching for them.  Not exactly Rodney King provocation.  Something big is going on in Paris, but I'm not sure we really know what it is. 

Comments

[M. Scott Eiland]

Good grief--the man called the people who were throwing things at him "thugs?" How in the world did someone with such a useful grasp of the obvious end up in de Villepin's government? It's like finding the Hope Diamond in a box of Cracker Jack.

[Jack Lecou]

They live on the dole for very long periods, which both reinforces an angry dependency and gives them time to engage in agitation.

Right. French socialism is obviously to blame here. Any fool knows that in more laissez-faire countries, unemployed youths never turn to crime and violence.

[liberal japonicus]

The Christian Science Monitor reports that unemployment rates for 21-29 year olds in these areas is above 30%. They live on the dole for very long periods, which both reinforces an angry dependency and gives them time to engage in agitation.

actually, my understanding is that it is at 50%. This is further complicated by the fact that a lot of people 'live on the dole', so that to reduce somehow reduce the number of Muslim youth on the dole would either be discriminatory, or would entail such a structural change in how government assistance is structured as to be impossible.

One of the reasons Muslim fundamentalists were allowed to do so much in France is because they were one of the few forces that could control the immigrant ghettos.

I'm not sure if I understand this. The problem is (at least to my eyes) that the state pursues a rather forceful policy of secularization. However, those who refuse to go along with that policy are basically put at the margins of society.

In addition, the militancy of muslim immigrants arose _after_ the rise of the French far right (led by Jean Marie Le Pen). This was one of the main topics of conversation when I lived in France in the early 80's, and in fact, Le Pen's first major foray into the national debate (in 1984) was turned back in large part by a youth campaign by SOS racisme

The fact that the National Front was able to garner about 15% of the vote has me suggest that it is not as simple as ungrateful Muslim youths.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Furthermore, the rioting began in response to two men who were electrocuted while they thought they were hiding from the police, even though the police weren't searching for them."

Or so the police say, but as Mandy Rice-Davies once put it, they would say that, wouldn't they? After the Charles de Menezes incident I'm not about to take on good faith anything policemen have to say about people who are no longer alive to testify on their own behalf.

One has to ask oneself what it is about the way in which the French police interact with the residents of the banlieues that would drive innocent youths to the extremity of trying to hide in such a dangerous place: it cannot be because the gendarmerie are the epitome of understanding and patience in dealing with residents of the ghetto.

"If statements like, "I use real words. When someone shoots at policemen, he is not just a ‘youth’, he is a lout, full stop," count as provocation it is a wonder that US cities aren't in a state of perpetual riot."

All well and good, except that isn't what was provocative about Sarkozy's remarks. He began by dismissing the two youths who died as hoodlums only for it to be subsequently revealed that neither had a criminal record, and then he compounded his error by talk of "cleaning out" the banlieues with German-style fire-hydrants, a turn of phrase one needn't be a limp-wristed multiculturalist to find repugnant.

At any rate, as tempting as it must be for many in America to leap to the usual "look at them Muslims!" reasoning, I think it is abundantly clear that these riots had nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with bad social and economic policies which have been building up tensions for years, a point even a contemptuous misanthrope like Dalrymple is forced to concede in his article. One needn't be criminal, Muslim or even poor to be treated like dirt in Paris: being black or (worse yet) Arab is enough, a point which has been made to me through the experiences of several personal acquaintances of mine who've visited the place as well as through the exceedingly many blatant expressions of anti-Arab racism I've witnessed coming from the mouths of supposedly sane Frenchmen. Some Americans may find it hard to believe, but not everything in this world is about September 11 and Osama Bin Laden.

[liberal japonicus]

Abiola,
in one of your comments at your foreigndispatches link, you also suggest that the unemployment rate for muslim youth is much higher than the above 30%. I remember reading that as well, but I'm wondering if you found a source. I've been searching unsuccessfully.

I remember reading the City Journal article when it came out and being shocked, because in the 80's, the Arab sections were a bit seedy, but still a place that you'd visit to get your leather jacket and shemagh that was the standard youth uniform at the time.

Finally, I'm wondering if there is a breakdown of the number of true immigrants versus the number of Algerian harkis (who came between in 1962 when, strictly speaking, they weren't immigrants but French citizens) and their descendants.

[cleek]

Could it be that only they had a view of right and wrong clear enough to wish to intervene?

my my. what a leap!

maybe it could simply be that people don't want to approach criminals who are bold enough to act in broad daylight on a busy street.

[Anderson]

Ed Koch for mayor of Paris!

[spartikus]

Could it be that the "Muslim fundamentalists" give these Arab-French youth something they cannot find in the broader French society? A sense of worth? A sense of empowerment? A chance to shed the self-perception of victimhood?

And perhaps that is fundamentalism's one and only appeal.

[Edward_]

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...etc. etc. etc. etc.

there's nothing new here. it's been repeated throughout history again and again and again.

what precipitates it always is an obscene and obvious gap in wealth, but bring up how to ensure such gaps are lessened and you're painted as a pinko commie

[Abiola Lapite]

"you also suggest that the unemployment rate for muslim youth is much higher than the above 30%. I remember reading that as well, but I'm wondering if you found a source. I've been searching unsuccessfully."

The problem is that the French government doesn't collect statistics by ethnicity or religion, so hard numbers aren't easy to come by, but this article quotes a Zinedine Houacine as saying 50 percent of all of France's unemployed are Muslim. Seeing as Muslims make up no more than 10% of the population, and the French unemployment is 10%, that would indicate that some 1 in 2 Muslims aren't working.

[Francis]

From personal experience, middle-class and middle-aged Frenchmen and women can be some of the most virulently and blatently racist people to be found anywhere. The loss of Algiers left a big angry mark on many French, often expressed as profound contempt / hatred / loathing of north africans.

there is also a much sharper divide between the political class and the middle class. Again from personal experience (time spent in bars in the early '80s), many of the working class felt utterly disconnected from their government and its immigration policies.

[anecdote is not the singular of data; i have no idea whether my impressions accurately reflect the french electorate. but given the success of Le Pen (a virulent french nationalist), I suspect that i'm not far off.]

[it's also noteworthy that i lived in France 20 years ago, so my recollections are just a smidge out of date. for example, the young kids marching in the streets chanting "Touche Pas a Mon Pote" (hands off my buddy) are now the middle aged middle class who should be remembering their youth and trying to do more to integrate north africans into the french economy. why that hasn't happened is beyond me.]

[McDuff]

*Shrug* Why should we care? This will probably all turn out very nicely for Those People.

Let them eat cake.

[nous_athanatos]

Something big is going on in Paris, but I'm not sure we really know what it is.

Unrest in les banlieues has been a problem for some time. If you have not seen Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La Haine, that might be a good place to start. Also:

...the weeklong tumult reiterates the persistent difficulties of integrating a predominantly Muslim minority plagued by unemployment, crime and identity crisis.

This is not a problem of unemployment or socialism. It is a complex issue. Parts of it are tied up in language. Parts of it are still linked to Algeria an to the legacy of colonialism. Parts of it have to do with the French government's commitment to having a completely secular approach to culture and identity. It's not just about bored minority youth corrupted by the indolence of life on the dole.

Nor should my analysis above be taken as an attack on the French government or on the French in general. I do not think that the French were a nation of evil colons (in the French sense, no bilingual pun intended ;). I think that they are doing their best and that there is a lot of frustration on all sides.

[dmbeaster]

francis:

From personal experience, middle-class and middle-aged Frenchmen and women can be some of the most virulently and blatently racist people to be found anywhere.

I have no personal experience, but I can recall many articles over the years concerning the racism practiced by the French toward the Algerian and other muslim peoples in their midst.

Racial profiling in law enforcement is, reportedly, routine in France. The level of official racism seems to be far excess of anything that occurs in the US, and is probably the root cause of this unrest.

The closest parallel seems to be Watts, 1965.

[DaveC]

Rioting is happening in Denmark as well, so it is not specifically a French problem.

More at Watch

[dutchmarbel]

DaveC, the Denmark link is about potential islamic terrorists, whilst the piece Charles quotes states that the Paris Riots are NOT about islamic activism.

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.

As stated by several posters, the French banlieus are a rotten environment. We have had discussions about them for decades, though mainly focussing on the drugsproblems. The French and the Dutch have very different points of view about drugs, addicts, treatment and prevention.

[ret123]

I wish this New Orleans would have turned out like this. Then we could have a real outlet to express our rage.

Continued ambivalence is probably the most we can muster about these riots.

[DaveC]

the Denmark link is about potential islamic terrorists

There was an earlier entry about riots in Arhus, and those riots have ended. I also saw that recently was the anniversary of the murder of Theo Van Gogh.

I wish this New Orleans would have turned out like this. Then we could have a real outlet to express our rage.

I dont think riots are good. The recent riots in Toledo, the 2001 riots in Cinncinati, didn't help anybody. I am surprised that so many people are in favor of class and race warfare. It's as if you think somebody is actually going to benefit. I used to stayover and visit the beautiful Museum Center in Cincity and the riverfront, etc. but haven't bothered to in the past few years.

[nous_athanatos]

I am surprised that so many people are in favor of class and race warfare. It's as if you think somebody is actually going to benefit.

Someone is benefiting from it right now (see current tax cuts), and it is going to cause a backlash very soon.

The riots in the '60s were part of the impetus for the Great Society. It was cheaper to spend money on welfare and the like than to hire more police to keep people from burning large sections of cities down and keep the violence from spilling over into the wealthy neighborhoods. At the time America had lots of money, so it made sense to try to address the structural inequalities.

The '60s were not the first in the cycle, either. Look at the Republic Steel Riots in the '30s and the Haymarket Riot in the 1880s.

It's cyclical and isomorphic, and there are too many selfish and callous people on either side for it to ever reach equilibrium. Call it the 'invisible backhand.'

[dutchmarbel]

the Denmark link is about potential islamic terrorists

I also saw that recently was the anniversary of the murder of Theo Van Gogh.

Which, again, is about islamic terrorism. I don't think the riots in Paris are specifically islamic in nature. According to my newspaper one of the Imams in the mosques said the young perpetrators were thugs too, deliberately using the same word as the one Sarkozky gets the heat for. And the police in France says that the only group of salafists they saw in the neighbourhood was trying to calm things down.

The riots are bad, and a sign of a hugh underlying problem that has existed for decades and has only gotten worse in that time.

[Phil]

I am surprised that so many people are in favor of class and race warfare.

You mean like cutting the Federal budget for [email protected]^&^$ food stamps while still stubbornly holding on to tax cuts that benefit that top 3-5%? That kind of class warfare? Or is it only "class warfare" when poor people do it?

The recent riots in Toledo . . .

Neiwert is required reading on this.

[Gary Farber]

"I wish this New Orleans would have turned out like this. Then we could have a real outlet to express our rage."

Because we lack any other, more productive, outlets.

And injury to innocents matters less than demonstrating rage through violence.

I suggest strong reconsideration of the wisdom in this.

[Gary Farber]

"I am surprised that so many people are in favor of class and race warfare."

Indeed. And the party carrying it out via such acts as making declaring bankruptcy harder, or cutting food stamps, or raising the deficit with yet another tax cut solely for the 3% making over $200k/year, should stop engaging in it, and people should stop voting for politicians who support such class warfare. It's quite terrible; what would the Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt say?

[Anna in Cairo]

The word "racaille" is not "thugs." It means "garbage" or "scum" only it is stronger than those words. He (the interior minister) said he would go into the neighborhoods and *sandblast* (not "clear out" or other more innocuous forms of expression) the *garbage* (meaning the human beings who live there). This disingenuous mistranslation is really too much. There is a lot of info out there about what is going on and how it stems from socio-economic causes and the Islamist canard is just that, Sarkozy pandering to the racists who think he is a sort of a cool Arnold Schwarzenegger type guy. It's totally disgusting.

[dutchmarbel]

Reading the comments about the French situation on various blogs I think it is amusing (in a painfull way) that a lot of people forget that the present French government represent the conservative French (not the socialist ones), whilst in Brittain Blair leads the socialists, not the conservatives.

[Steven Lamb]

My Oxford French/English dicationary says that "racaille" translates to "rabble." Rabble sounds more like "thugs" than "scum" to me. In addition, I have heard several French reporters on the BBC suggest that translating "racaille" into "scum" is a gross mischaracterization.