France’s long struggle ahead

Kanwal Sibal

FRANCE has again suffered a massive terrorist attack, the third in the last 18 months — and that too symbolically on its National Day — making it the most targeted European country by Islamist elements. France has faced terrorist attacks in recent decades attributed to disparate sources — Carlos the Jackal, PLO, Hezbollah, the urban guerrilla group Action Directe, Corsicans, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and so on. While these attacks caused single digit casualties, the three recent attacks, in January and November 2015, and now at Nice, have been far more murderous, with  20, 130 and 84 dead, respectively. It shows the determination of the Islamists to inflict mass casualties indiscriminately. The scale and scope of the terrorist threat has got magnified, becoming more unpredictable and therefore more difficult to prevent. 

France, with its experience of handling terrorism, has laws, institutions and response mechanisms well in place. After the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, these were reinforced. The state of emergency declared following the horrific June 2015 attacks will be extended after the Nice carnage. Additional police and military personnel had already been deployed in public areas to provide greater security after the June attacks. President Hollande is now calling in 10,000 reservists for such duty. The state of emergency in force had given the French police powers to detain suspects and conduct searches without warrant and so on, but these exceptional measures have failed to prevent the Nice attack. 

France, as other democratic countries in the cross-hairs of terrorism, will find it exceedingly difficult to cope with the menace. The state of emergency cannot be overly prolonged without affecting democratic life and individual rights. Recruitment of additional police personnel and more military presence in public areas, apart from the costs involved, creates a siege mentality, which is incompatible in the long run with an open and free society like that of France, with its open borders and huge tourist inflows, its soft power and the quality of life that is the country’s hallmark. It will also entail economic costs. 

In any case, France cannot control its external environment as it wishes. The source of terrorism is outside the country, though with domestic linkages. It is not only France, but other major European countries, the US, Russia, Nigeria, East African countries, some Southeast Asian countries, India and others who are targeted by Islamic terrorism. France cannot hope to only protect itself and leave the others exposed. The threat has to dealt with collectively, but, despite calls for it, even by Islamic countries who are actually the fount of extremist ideologies that are causing international havoc today, the collective will does not practically exist. Even today, Islamist groups are being supported in Syria against the Assad regime for geopolitical reasons. Saudi Arabia, the most powerful ideological source of extremist Islam, is an ally of the West. Its role, and that of Qatar, and the UAE in mobilising Sunni extremism against the Syrian regime and Iraq’s Shia government, with the power conflict with Iran as the driving force, has been responsible for the emergence of the IS, with US complaisance. Now that the savagery of the IS and the dangerous ideas it propagates is being recognised, the willingness to destroy it physically is growing, but geopolitical ambiguities of key countries persist. Even if the IS is physically eliminated in Syria/Iraq, the ideas it has incubated will not be easy to destroy and will be disseminated from Libya and elsewhere. President Hollande has announced that France will resolutely target those responsible in Iraq and Syria for the Nice carnage. One can understand his impulse but France cannot eliminate the IS alone; it needs the US and its Western partners as well as Russia to do this, not to mention the Gulf states and Turkey, but such a coalition will not be easy to forge.

If the safe havens of those attacking France are spread across the Islamic world and thus outside French jurisdiction, safe havens for would-be terrorists exist within France itself. The recent major attacks were committed by French nationals of Arab origin or Arabs residing in France. Evidently, the sense of alienation amongst sections of French Arabs against their own country is deep. To what extent this is on account of poor integration, discrimination, lack of employment or growth of right-wing sentiment against immigrants can be debated. There have been periodic outbursts in recent years of violence and arson in French urban conglomerations by French Arabs, which points to strong simmering social discontent. On the other hand, France is a remarkably tolerant society, deeply attached to ideas of equality and human freedoms. The French Arabs enjoy all the rights of French citizenship and all the social safety nets that the French state provides. The fundamental problem in Europe is that of assimilating Muslims in non-Muslim societies. Even British multiculturalism has not succeeded, judging from the number of British origin Muslims who have joined the IS and its beheading spree. 

France has the largest Muslim population of all European countries, with surveys indicating a Muslim population of about 4.7 million or 8 per cent of the total population — mainly of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian origin. This demographic fact is pertinent in understanding France’s Muslim problem as it unfolds. French intervention in Libya or Syria should not normally be a reason for French Arabs to perpetrate violent acts against their own country. If they do so, it is not because of nationality or ties of blood; it is because of the trans-national Islamic bond and some of the tenets of the religion. France by itself cannot resolve this problem. Social media is being used by the Islamists for indoctrination. Individuals can be mobilised by distant preaching to commit terrorist attacks, described as the “lone wolf” attacks. Control over social media raises questions of freedom of speech about which democratic societies are very sensitive. The methodology of attacks seems networked too. The Nice terrorist used a vehicle to mow down people in much the same way as the Uighurs used an automobile to mow down pedestrians in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in October 2013, or a man yelling “Allahu Akbar” ran over 10 pedestrians with his vehicle and killed one in Nantes in France in 2014.

France has a long struggle ahead. India has every reason to stand by it on the terrorism issue, but we too need support of the international community against the continued use of terrorism as state policy by Pakistan against us, shown again by its support for Burhan Wani and declaring him a martyr.

— The writer is a former Foreign Secretary