Islamic Terror in France
VALLS-RUSSELL, JANICE
LEARNING A LESSON Islamic Terror In France BY JANICE VALLS-RUSSELL Paris Arecent cartoon appearing in the satirical weekly he Canard Enchaine shows French President Jacques Chirac reading a...
...The AIG is indeed a sprawling, nebulous collection of nasties...
...Police were stoned, cars torched, and shopping centers ransacked...
...For the moment, though, the French Interior Ministry is being cautious...
...Abou Fares and a cadre of like-minded fundamentalists have been granted political asylum in England, where they publish Al-Ansar, an Islamist newsletter...
...Although Algeria's brutal suppression of the Islamists is distasteful to democratic stomachs, French observers argue that fundamentalist violence is just as sickening and a greater threat to North African stability...
...But the Home Office may be having second thoughts about these troublesome guests...
...In September, he rashly announced that Kelkal, just killed by the police, had been responsible for all the attacks...
...Those arrested included Boualem Bensaid, an alleged member of the Armed Islamic Group (AIG...
...Already, the government has announced that police patrolling such danger spots will be equipped with bulletproof vests and rubber bullets...
...The Armed Islamic Group wants me to convert to Islam...
...Seemingly intent on making things worse, Jean-Claude Gaudin, the Minister for Urban Planning and Integration, of all people, compared this juvenile thuggery to the intifada and suggested the need for measures akin to the current anti-terrorist security clamp-down...
...It was a brother of one of the killed hijackers who delivered the letter demanding Chirac's conversion to France's Algiers embassy in August...
...Debre asks: "What do you intend to do...
...of the most senior AIG men in Europe and thought to have arranged the financing of operations in France...
...During a gang rampage in a shopping center the only place spared was McDonald's...
...The November 16 balloting in Algeria has added a hopeful wrinkle to the situation...
...Nevertheless, the Metro was hit again October 17 when a bomb ripped apart a train on a busy line traveling to its next stop...
...The authorities appear anxious to appease the extremist fringe of Britain's Muslim community?while currying favor with those who could one day be the masters of Algeria...
...Actually, the children of immigrants are pretty much like French kids...
...Many are distressed that while outsiders may have planned the attacks, Algerian-born young men like Kelkal, who grew up here, have helped to carry them out...
...The mastermind of the terrorism in France, however, may be in Britain...
...The incident ended when French police stormed the plane...
...As if to confirm inflammatory far-Right propaganda warning that hordes of young fanatics lurk in these suburbs ready to wreak havoc, violence erupted in several areas in late October...
...Gas containers and pressure-cookers packed with explosives and homemade shrapnel have been set off near the Arc de Triomphe, at an open-air market and outside a Jewish school (minutes before pupils were due to leave...
...Hang Algeria" was the emphatic message of an early November opinion poll: A clear majority of the French do not see why they should continue to support the Algerian regime, or provide asylum for those who would flee in the event of a fundamentalist takeover...
...LEARNING A LESSON Islamic Terror In France BY JANICE VALLS-RUSSELL Paris Arecent cartoon appearing in the satirical weekly he Canard Enchaine shows French President Jacques Chirac reading a letter to Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre: "Listen to this...
...Small wonder, then, that the terrorism has taken on an added dimension for France's 3 million North African immigrants: They alone would suffer in any xenophobic backlash...
...Postal officials examine the contents of parcels...
...Whatever his real name, he is considered one Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...
...Hence the pumping of economic and military aid across the Mediterranean by successive Paris governments...
...Further complicating matters is the fact that low-paying stopgap jobs are almost the only alternative to the dole queue, so the temptation for dropouts to peddle drugs is greater than ever...
...Thirty years ago, this country had to cope with French extremists angered by Charles de Gaulle's retreat from Algeria...
...Last year, a series of police raids revealed arms caches on the premises of Muslim "cultural" associations...
...As a result, districts in the high-rise, high-unemployment suburbs that house an ethnic mix of about 6 million around large cities are proving increasingly unsafe at night...
...French investigators are confident their British colleagues will cooperate, and not only for security reasons: Prime Minister John Major is courting Chirac, a kindred spirit who is lukewarm about a European Monetary Union and bedeviled by Euroskeptics...
...They are less mesmerized by religion than by their peer group's fads for particular items?but these often become obsessive musts when one lacks the money to buy them...
...Kelkal, for instance, graduated directly from stealing cars to bombs...
...Other terrorists, Debre warns, may be waiting to strike...
...The Gulf War inspired a sense of hostility toward the "wicked" West among insecure young Muslims in their 20s and 30s...
...In the wake of the French arrests, Scotland Yard raided Islamic bases in London and arrested several men, including Abou Fares, for whom a Paris magistrate has issued an international warrant...
...And citizens are urged to report suspicious-looking characters, vehicles and objects...
...Some Muslim militants have enrolled in British universities, prompting other students to protest their aggressive activism...
...His name was found in a notebook belonging to Khaled Kelkal, a young suspect shot dead by the French police in September...
...Luckily a device placed on the high-speed rail-link between Paris and Lyons was a dud...
...Today, Algerian fanatics opposing their own government (and France's support of it) are waging their battle on French soil...
...Last December, before the current spate of bombings began, militants hijacked an Air France jet carrying French and Algerian passengers...
...Hamburgers and the Koran: If these are the cultural icons competing for attention in France's depressed suburbs, Chirac can expect more trouble...
...Since their first assault July 25 in the Paris Metro, seven people have been killed and 182 injured...
...He has learned his lesson...
...This might have gained credence if a bomb had gone off in the Lille market, since it attracts throngs of North African immigrants and few of them are friends of Algeria's generals...
...Different fundamentalist sources have tried to portray Algerian intelligence as the real culprit...
...a week later, the bombing resumed...
...Schools, universities, public transportation, and government buildings are under close surveillance...
...With 75 per cent of the electorate turning out, despite the militants' calls for a boycott, Zeroual received 61 per cent of the vote...
...Communiques issued in Islamist publications based in Britain and Germany suggest that more than one of its groups has been conduct-ingthe campaign inFrance...
...But an internal police report attributes this outburst more to exasperation over security measures than radicalism: Some officers can't resist insulting nonwhite teens while checking their identities...
...Bensaid and Kelkal were in contact with "Abou Fares," a London resident known to the British and French security services as Rachid Ramda, and to Algerian intelligence as 36-year-old Abdelkader Ben-ouif—who was sentenced to death in absentia for a 1992 raid on Algiers Airport that left nine dead and 123 injured...
...Tight security measures have been implemented nationwide...
...A teenager arrested trying to ram a shop window with a stolen car said he wanted a pair of Nikes...
...Soldiers guard airports and rail stations...
...Chirac has not yet converted to Islam, even if the canceling of an October meeting with Algerian President Liamine Ze-roual caused a diplomatic fuss...
...On November 2, police rounded up a half-dozen individuals in Paris, Lyons and the northern city of Lille who were said to be planning to car-bomb Lille's crowded marketplace...
...Preposterous as it may seem, the artist was merely echoing a demand made by Algerian fanatics behind the latest wave of terrorism in France...
...Outside French political and diplomatic circles, meanwhile, people are rapidly losing their patience...
...The difference in the case of young Muslims is that imams wait in the shadows, eager to offer greater kicks than can be gotten by breaking through shop windows...
...Resentment has been fueled as well by a reform obliging children of immigrants, even those born in France, to apply for citizenship when they turn 18, instead of being granted it automatically as hitherto...
...His fingerprints match those on both the mechanism that didn't go off on the Paris-Lyons railway tracks, and the fragments of a bomb that did go off here October 6. In addition, he has been charged in the October 17 bombing...
...One can't help linking British leniency with the still-active fatwah calling for Salman Rushdie's death...
...But it will be some time before anyone can tell whether, or to what extent, the opposition is ready to accept the outcome and give up its terror tactics...
...Extra police patrol the streets...
...Muslims, one should note, are not exempt from the fury: In mid-July an imam considered relatively moderate by French officials was assassinated in a Paris mosque...
...Rescue operations were so difficult that several trapped passengers had to undergo amputations on the spot...
Vol. 78 • December 1995 • No. 9
