Nice – The Wire

FIR Filed Against Poet Munawwar Rana Over Alleged Remarks on France Terror Attacks

The poet said his comments were misconstrued and they were made in the context of India.

Lucknow An FIR has been registered against Urdu poet Munawwar Rana for allegedly defending the recent killings in France over a caricature of Prophet Muhammad, the police said on Monday.

Rana had made the controversial comments in an interview to a news channel after three people were killed in a knife attack at a church in Nice last week. A few weeks ago, an assailant had decapitated a French middle school teacher who showed caricatures of Prophet Muhammad for a class on free speech.

The case against Rana has been lodged at the Hazratganj police station in Lucknow on Sunday under various Indian Penal Code sections, including 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings), an officer said.

The poet has also been booked under IPC Section 505 (statements conducing public mischief) and Section 66 of the Information Technology Act, the officer said. Police have lodged the FIR taking cognisance of the TV interview and a probe is on, the officer said.

In a purported video clip of the interview that went viral on social media, Rana can be heard saying: “If any person makes such a bad cartoon of my father or mother, then I will kill him.” Asked if he is supporting the entire incident, he said: “I will kill him…”

When contacted by PTI, Rana said the comments were misconstrued and they were made in the context of India. “If anyone makes an indecent and vulgar picture of our gods and goddesses- Lord Ram, Goddess Sita and Saraswati, and the person making it is a Muslim or anyone else, I will kill such person as he is spreading hatred,” he said. “And it requires immense courage to kill a person hailing from your family or community.”

“The person who made the cartoon (in France) had done a wrong act and the person who murdered the cartoonist did an extremely wrong act,” Rana said. The poet asserted that he did not endorse murders taking place anywhere in the world. He pointed out that in the Ballabhgarh case in Haryana, he had tweeted that both the youths should be shot at the same place where they had shot a 21-year-old woman last week.

I Hear Your Anger, but Won’t Accept Violence: France’s Macron to Muslims

“I understand and respect that people could be shocked by these cartoons, but I will never accept that one can justify physical violence over these cartoons, and I will always defend the freedom in my country to write, to think, to draw,” Macron said.

Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday he respected Muslims who were shocked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad but that was no excuse for violence, as his officials ramped up security after a knife attack in a French church that killed three people this week.

An assailant shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in Nice on Thursday, in France’s second deadly knife attack in two weeks with a suspected Islamist motive.

The suspected assailant, a 21-year-old from Tunisia, was shot by police and is now in critical condition in a hospital.

Police said on Saturday that another person was taken into custody in connection with the attack. That person joins three others already in custody on suspicion of contacts with the attacker.

Macron has deployed thousands of soldiers to protect sites such as places of worship and schools, and ministers have warned that other Islamist militant attacks could take place.

The Nice attack, on the day Muslims celebrated the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday, came amid growing Muslim anger across the world over France’s defence of the right to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet.

On October 16, Samuel Paty, a school teacher in a Paris suburb, was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen who was apparently incensed by the teacher showing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad in class during a civics lesson.

Protesters have denounced France in street rallies in several Muslim-majority countries, and some have called for boycotts of French goods.

France, on edge in anticipation of more possible attacks, was jolted on Saturday evening when a Greek Orthodox priest was shot and wounded in his church in the south-eastern city of Lyon. But officials gave no indication that terrorism was suspected.

Macron’s outreach

In an effort to rectify what he said were misapprehensions about France’s intentions in the Muslim world, Macron gave an interview to Arabic television network Al Jazeera that was broadcast on Saturday.

In it, he said France would not back down in the face of violence and would defend the right to free expression, including the publication of cartoons.

But he stressed that did not mean he or his officials supported the cartoons, which Muslims consider blasphemous, or that France was in any way anti-Muslim.

Also read: Narendra Modi Condemns Attacks in France, Supports Fight Against Terror

“So I understand and respect that people could be shocked by these cartoons, but I will never accept that one can justify physical violence over these cartoons, and I will always defend the freedom in my country to write, to think, to draw,” Macron said, according to an interview transcript released by his office.

“My role is to calm things down, which is what I’m doing, but at the same time, it’s to protect these rights.”

Suspect’s journey

France’s chief anti-terrorism prosecutor has said the man suspected of carrying out the Nice attack was a Tunisian born in 1999 who had arrived in Europe on Septmeber 20 in Lampedusa, the Italian island off Tunisia.

Prosecutors in the Sicilian city of Palermo, in Italy, are investigating the man’s subsequent passage through the island, including the people he might have been in touch with there, and are requisitioning phone records, judicial sources told Reuters.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that the suspect arrived in the Italian city of Bari in early October, on a ship used to quarantine migrants, before leaving for Palermo, the sources said.

Nice Attack Points to Continued Tunisian Struggle With Jihadists

The man who beheaded an elderly woman and killed two others in a church in the French Riviera city was thought to be a 21-year-old Tunisian who recently entered France via Italy.

Tunis: Though French police believe the attacker who killed three people in Nice on Thursday is a Tunisian, the North African democracy has made big strides in tackling the jihadist threat in recent years.

A French police source told Reuters the man who beheaded an elderly woman and killed two others in a church in the French Riviera city was thought to be a 21-year-old Tunisian who recently entered France via Italy.

Five years after militant Islamists killed scores of tourists in two mass shootings in Tunisia, police in the North African state have grown better at disrupting plots and responding quickly when attacks take place, diplomats say.

However, a steady series of smaller attacks has shown that the threat remains.

Tunisians made up one of the largest contingents of foreign fighters for Islamic State, and though many died in wars in Syria and Iraq, some returned home and were imprisoned.

An Al-Qaeda group is meanwhile entrenched in a hilly, inaccessible part of the border region between Tunisia and Algeria but has proven unable to stage attacks beyond that area.

The last major attack in Nice was also carried out by a Tunisian man who had emigrated to France in 2005 before driving a truck into a Bastille Day crowd in 2016, killing 86 people.

Tunisia’s Foreign Ministry condemned the latest Nice attack and a branch of the judiciary said it has opened an investigation into the suspect.

Though the 2011 revolution brought Tunisia democracy and freedom of expression, it did not translate into an improvement in living standards or economic opportunity, and ever more young people have sought to emigrate.

In September, Italy said the number of migrants arriving over the past year in boats across the Mediterranean – often to the small island of Lampedusa – had risen by half thanks in part to Tunisia’s economic woes.

Lampedusa is only 130 km (80 miles) from the Tunisian coast and young Tunisians living in port towns have told Reuters of a constant temptation to board the ever-present boats departing at night and seek their fortunes in prosperous Europe.

(Reuters)

Why Ramming Vehicles Has Become the Attack of Choice for Terrorists

Al-Qaeda and ISIS have both encouraged would-be terrorists to use vehicles like cars and trucks as weapons.

The truck used by the perpetrator in the 2016 Berlin attacks. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Emilio Esbardo

The recent car-and-knife attack in London was just the latest in a string of high-profile incidents where assailants have used vehicles as deadly weapons. This type of attack has over the past few years become a feature of violent terrorism in the West and elsewhere – so where did it come from, and how did it become such a common method?

The most famous forbears of the vehicle-ramming attack were the 1981 bombing of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut and the 1983 attacks on the US marine barracks and embassy in Beirut – widely held to be the first examples of modern suicide bombing. In the 1983 attacks, explosive-laden vehicles were not only used to deliver improvised explosive devices (IEDs) but also to breach the perimeters around their targets.

In the years since, attackers have used vehicles to breach security perimeters to detonate IEDs both on land (the 2007 Glasgow Airport attack) and at sea (the 2000 USS Cole bombing). But the use of vehicle-ramming as a terrorist technique in itself, rather than as a means of delivering explosives, is a relatively recent innovation.

Its roots can be traced to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and especially the summer of 2008, when vehicles were three times used to deliberately strike pedestrians. The first two attacks involved bulldozers, while the third used a car. By 2016, vehicle-ramming attacks in Israel had become the second deadliest form of attack carried out by Palestinians against Israelis, behind only stabbing.

It is not hard to see why. Vehicle-ramming attacks are comparatively easy to plan and carry out without detection. The weapon involved is perfectly legal to own and operate but can be devastating; that much was made plain by the 2016 truck attack in Nice, which killed 86 people and injured hundreds.

For years, vehicle-ramming attacks were largely confined to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But in 2010, the method got a major promotional boost when it was outlined in the second issue of Inspire Magazine, an English-language online publication purporting to emanate from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Spreading the word

In a 2010 article titled The Ultimate Mowing Machine, Inspire provided readers with basic instructions on how to select targets and which type of vehicle to use. It emphasised that the perpetrators would probably die in such an attack, and that they should therefore leave behind notes explaining their motivations. The article also proposed continuing the attack using firearms or melee weapons once the vehicle was immobilised.

With slick production values and graphics, Inspire mixed ideologically driven material with pragmatic instructional content in an effort to foster a do-it-yourself approach to terrorism. It attempted to motivate potential attackers in the West while suggesting methods of attack that did not demand much in the way of skill.

This is the sort of attack that has cropped up in the West in the years since. In 2013, British army soldier Lee Rigby was run over by a car before being stabbed to death in southeast London. In 2014, one Canadian solider was killed and another injured after being deliberately struck by a car driven by Martin Couture-Rouleau, who had previously expressed a desire to travel to Iraq to fight with ISIS. He was shot and killed as he charged at a police officer with a knife – an attack which the 13th volume of Inspire magazine hailed as “exemplary”.

Then came the Nice attack in summer 2016, a smaller car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University, the attack on a Berlin Christmas Market, and most recently, the incident in Westminster.

The proliferation of vehicle-ramming incidents matches the strategic vision of Anwar al-Awlaki, a popular American-born cleric affiliated with AQAP. While he was killed in a drone strike in 2011, Al-Awlaki’s sermons – widely distributed on YouTube – fundamentally shifted al-Qaeda’s strategy away from organised jihad and towards do-it-yourself terrorism.

Although its authenticity has been questioned, Inspire played a major part. It did not just disseminate know-how; it convinced its readers that the technique is “legitimate”. For a new terroristic technique to spread, potential perpetrators have to be convinced that it is just and right – and this is what Inspire achieved.

DIY terrorism

ISIS, too, has promoted vehicle-ramming. In 2014, IS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani stated: “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car.”

Similarly, in late 2014, IS media group al-Hayat released a eight-minute video in which French jihadi Abu Salman al-Faranci instructs his audience: “Terrorise them and do not allow them to sleep due to fear and horror.” He then goes on to extol vehicle-ramming as an appropriate substitute for travelling to Iraq and Syria to fight: “There are weapons and cars available and targets ready to be hit … Kill them and spit in their faces and run over them with your cars.”

IS also praised vehicle-ramming attacks in the third edition of its English-language Rumiyah magazine, published in 2016, encouraging the use of trucks to carry out attacks because “very few actually comprehend the deadly and destructive capability of the motor vehicle and its capacity of reaping large numbers of casualties if used in a premeditated manner”, also instructing its sympathisers to steal such vehicles if needed.

Vehicle-ramming attacks perfectly meet the criteria for a successful terrorist technique – undemanding of skill, legitimate among their perpetrators, and highly effective. Moreover as Israel’s experience shows, they are also contagious: much like airliner hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s, the spectacle of successful attacks emboldens and inspires numerous other individuals looking for a method that fits their abilities and resources.

So whether or not the attack on Westminster really was an act of terrorism, the shockingly blunt and effective methodology it used is likely to be seen again.

Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, PhD Candidate, Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

EU to Target Islamist Militants by Widening its Sanctions Regime

Until now, EU rules allowed only for sanctions on individuals and companies targeted by the UN. EU governments could act individually.

A European Union flag is waved over a statue of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill as demonstrators protest during a "March for Europe" against the Brexit vote result earlier in the year, in rLondon, Britain, September 3, 2016. Credit: Reuters/ Luke MacGregor

An EU flag is waved over a statue of former prime minister Winston Churchill as demonstrators protest during a ‘March for Europe’ against the Brexit vote result earlier in the year, in London, Britain, September 3, 2016. Credit: Reuters/ Luke MacGregor

Brussels: The EU agreed on Tuesday to freeze assets of Islamist militants and their financial backers even if they are not on UN blacklists, an initiative advanced by France after deadly attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice.

Until now, EU rules allowed only for sanctions on individuals and companies targeted by the UN. EU governments could act individually. There was no EU-wide policy.

No one was put under sanctions on Tuesday, but the new rules will allow the EU to target militants who have planned or taken part in attacks, as well as those who finance or arm militant groups such as ISIS and al Qaida and those who seek to recruit more members.

Foreign nationals suspected of fighting for or supporting Islamist militants in Syria and Iraq will also now be put under Europe-wide travel bans, barring them from entry to the bloc.

EU nationals will also be hit with asset freezes, although they cannot be blocked from returning home and governments have promised to arrest and prosecute them.

French, German, Belgian and British citizens have joined insurgent forces in Syria and Iraq and some returning volunteers took part in the November attacks in Paris and those in Brussels in March. ISIS claimed responsibility for those as well as the attack in Nice in July.

“Such measures will target particularly the so-called foreign fighters,” the European Council of EU governments said in a statement. “The EU will be able to list any person who meets the criteria, including EU nationals who have supported these organisations outside the EU and who then return.”

While the number of European foreign fighters is difficult to track, a Dutch study showed in April that more than 4,200 Europeans had gone to fight in Syria’s civil war, of whom 30% had since returned and 14% were confirmed dead.

ISIS Urges Members to Carry Out Jihad in Russia

ISIS released a video encouraging its members in Russia to engage in jihad.

An Islamic State flag is seen in this picture illustration taken February 18, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Files

Cairo: ISIS called on its group members to carry out jihad in Russia in a nine-minute YouTube video on Sunday.

“Listen Putin, we will come to Russia and will kill you at your homes … Oh Brothers, carry out jihad and kill and fight them,” a masked man driving a car in the desert yelled while wagging his finger in the last couple of minutes of the video.

The video with subtitles showed footage of armed men attacking armoured vehicles and tents and collecting arms in the desert. “Breaking into a barrack of the Rejectionist military on the international road south Akashat,” read one subtitle.

It was not immediately possible to independently verify the video but the link to the footage was published on a Telegram messaging account used by the militant group.

It was not immediately clear why Russia would be a target, but Russia and the US are talking about boosting military and intelligence cooperation against ISIS and al Qaida in Syria.

ISIS has called on its supporters to take action with any available weapons targeting countries it has been fighting.

There has been a string of deadly attacks claimed by ISIS in Europe over the past weeks. Last week, assailants loyal to ISIS forced an elderly Catholic priest in France to his knees before slitting his throat. Since the mass killing in Nice, southern France on July 14, there have been four incidents in Germany, including the most recent suicide bombing at a concert in Ansbach.

(Reuters)

Obama Slams Republican Idea ‘Test’ For Muslims in Wake of Nice Attack

Without naming names, Obama responded to a suggestion from Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker, who said a religious test was needed for Muslims in America, deporting them if they believe in Sharia law.

US President Barack Obama speaks about the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice at the Diplomatic Corps Reception at the White House in Washington, US, July 15. Credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas

Washington: President Barack Obama on July 15 angrily denounced suggestions from some Republican leaders that Muslims in America be “tested” after an attack in Nice, France, that killed at least 84 people, calling the idea “repugnant.”

Making his first public comments since a Tunisian man drove a truck through a crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks, Obama told a gathering of ambassadors at the White House that the US stands with France and vows to fight terrorism.

Obama did not explicitly link the attack to Islamic State militants who have been connected to other recent attacks around the globe, saying that the details were not yet clear. He vowed to continue to fight the group.

“These terrorists are targeting and killing innocent people of all backgrounds and all faiths, including Muslims. I know I speak for all of us when I say these individuals and these networks are an affront to all of our humanity,” he said.

Without naming names, Obama responded to a suggestion from Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker, who on July 14 said a religious test was needed for Muslims in America, deporting them if they believe in Sharia law.

Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for the November 8 presidential election, has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

“In the wake of last night’s attacks, we’ve heard more suggestions that all Muslims in America be targeted, tested for their beliefs, some deported or jailed,” Obama said.

“The very suggestion is repugnant and an affront to everything we stand for as Americans,”Obama said.

Obama, who spoke earlier on July 15 with French President Francois Hollande, said he met with French Ambassador Gerard Araud to offer sympathy and help.

Obama also spoke about a father and son from Texas who were killed in the attack. “Their family, like so many others, are devastated,” Obama said.

(Reuters)

Post Nice Attack, France Investigates Whether Truck Attacker Acted Alone

A US official familiar with Washington’s assessment said the attack was thought to have been carried out by a “lone wolf” inspired but not directed by Islamic State.

A US official familiar with Washington’s assessment said the Nice attack was thought to have been carried out by a “lone wolf” inspired but not directed by Islamic State.

Investigators continue to work at the scene near the heavy truck that ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores who were celebrating the Bastille Day July 14 national holiday on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, July 15. Credit: Reuters/Eric Gaillard

Nice, France: French authorities were trying to determine on July 15 whether a Tunisian who killed at least 84 people by ploughing a truck into Bastille Day crowds had acted alone or with accomplices, but said the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamist militants.

July 14 night’s attack in the Riviera city of Nice plunged France into new grief and fear just eight months after gunmen killed 130 people in Paris. Those attacks, and one in Brussels four months ago, shocked Western Europe, already anxious over security challenges from mass immigration, open borders and pockets of Islamist radicalism.

The truck zigzagged along the city’s seafront Promenade des Anglais as a fireworks display marking the French national day ended. It careered into families and friends listening to an orchestra or strolling above the Mediterranean beach towards the century-old grand Hotel Negresco.

At least 10 children were among the dead. Of the scores of injured, 25 were on life support, authorities said on July 15.

Witness Franck Sidoli said he had watched people mow down before the truck finally stopped just five metres away from him.

“A woman was there, she lost her son. Her son was on the ground, bleeding,” he told Reuters at the scene.

The driver, 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was shot dead by officers at the scene. He was known to police for petty crimes but was not on a watch list of suspected militants. He had one criminal conviction, for road rage, and was sentenced to probation three months ago for throwing a wooden pallet at another driver.

The investigation “will try to determine whether he benefited from accomplices,” Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. “It will also try to find out whether Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had ties to Islamist terrorist organisations.”

“Although yesterday’s attack has not been claimed, this sort of thing fits in perfectly with calls for murder from such terrorist organisations,” Molins added.

Bouhlel’s ex-wife was in police custody, Molins said. He had three children. Police found one pistol and various fake weapons in his truck.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the evening news that Bouhlel was “one way or another” linked to radical Islam. “Yes, it is a terrorist act and we shall see what links there are with terrorist organisations.”

Yet despite numerous French officials from President Francois Hollande down describing it as a terrorist attack, by nightfall on July 15 officials still had not disclosed any direct evidence linking Bouhlel with extremists.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, asked if he could confirm the attacker’s motives were linked to jihadism, said: “No. We have an individual who was not known to intelligence services for activities linked to jihadism.”

A US official familiar with Washington’s assessment said the attack was thought to have been carried out by a “lone wolf” inspired but not directed by Islamic State (ISIS).

The former top terrorism investigator for the French judicial system said that while the attack fits the profile of the kind undertaken by militant groups, the available evidence suggests the attacker had no evident connection with militant organisations or ideology.

Jean-Louis Bruguiere, formerly the top Paris-based investigative magistrate handling terrorism-related cases, told Reuters no French or European intelligence or security agency had any trace on the suspect and no evidence has surfaced to connect him to any militant group or other suspects or even to casual contact with militant literature or propaganda.

He said so far there is no evidence Bouhlel had any association with any religious group or faction but that there was evidence he was estranged from his family and going through some kind of divorce.

Dried blood, smashed strollers

Dawn broke on July 15 with pavements smeared with dried blood. Smashed strollers, an uneaten baguette and other debris were strewn about. Small areas were screened off and what appeared to be bodies covered in blankets were visible.

The truck was still where it had come to rest, its windscreen riddled with bullets.

“I saw this enormous white truck go past at top speed,” said Suzy Wargniez, 65, who had watched from a cafe on the promenade.

At Nice’s Pasteur hospital, medical staff were treating large numbers of injured. Waiting for friends being operated on was 20-year-old Fanny.

“The truck pushed me to the side. When I opened my eyes I saw faces I didn’t know and started asking for help,” she told Reuters. “Some of my friends were not so lucky. They are having operations as we speak.”

Neighbours in the neighbourhood in northern Nice where Bouhlel lived described him as handsome but an unsettling presence.

“I would say he was someone who was pleasing to women,” said neighbour Hanan, standing in the lobby of the apartment building where Bouhlel lived. “But he was frightening. He didn’t have a frightening face, but … a look. He would stare at the children a lot.”

Bouhlel’s Tunisian home town Msaken is about 10 km (six miles) outside the coastal city of Sousse, where a gunman killed 38 people, mostly British holidaymakers, on a beach a year ago. Many people from the area have moved to France, including Nice, and money they send back has made it comparatively prosperous.

A former neighbour in Msaken told Reuters Bouhlel had left for France in 2005 after getting married, and had worked as a driver.

Relatives and neighbours in Msaken said Bouhlel was sporty and had shown no sign of being radicalised, including when he last returned for the wedding of a sister four years ago.

A nephew, Ibrahim, said he had called three days ago saying he was preparing a trip back for a family party. Bouhlel’s brother, Jabeur, said he doubted his sibling was the attacker.

“Why would my brother do something like this?” he told Reuters, adding: “We’ve been calling him since yesterday evening but he’s not responding.”

Gritty metropolis

Nice, a city of 350,000, has a history as a flamboyant aristocratic resort but is also a gritty metropolis, where Islamist radicalism has brewed, away from the scenic streets of its old town. It and the surrounding Alpes-Maritimes region, with a population of just over a million, are thought to have produced as many as 10% of the French citizens who have travelled to wage jihad in the Middle East.

After July 14 attack, a state of emergency imposed across France after the November attacks in Paris was extended by three months and military and police reservists were to be called up.

“France is filled with sadness by this new tragedy,” Hollande said in a dawn address that called it an act of terrorism.

Nice-Matin journalist Damien Allemand had been watching the firework display when the truck tore by. After taking cover in a cafe, he wrote on his paper’s website of what he saw: “Bodies every five metres, limbs … Blood. Groans.”

“The beach attendants were first on the scene. They brought water for the injured and towels, which they placed on those for whom there was no more hope.”

Police carried out a controlled explosion on a white van near the home, blowing the doors open and leaving shattered glass all around. It was not clear what they found.

Criticism

With presidential and parliamentary elections less than a year away, French opposition politicians seized on what they described as security failings that made it possible for the truck to career 2 km through large crowds before it was finally halted.

Christian Estrosi, a security hardliner who was mayor of Nice until last month and is now president of the wider Riviera region, had written on the eve of the attack to Hollande to demand more funding for police.

“As far as I’m concerned, I demand answers, and not the usual stuff,” Estrosi told BFM TV hours after the attack, questioning whether the government had provided enough national police officers for the fireworks display.

France is a major part of a US-led mission conducting air strikes and special forces operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and has also sent troops to West Africa to battle Islamist insurgents.

“We will further strengthen our actions in Syria and Iraq,” Hollande said, calling the tragedy – on the day France marks the 1789 revolutionary storming of the Bastille prison in Paris – an attack on liberty by fanatics who despised human rights.

“We are facing a battle that will be long because facing us is an enemy that wants to continue to strike all people and all countries that have values like ours,” he said.

France is home to the EU’s biggest Muslim population, mostly descended from immigrants from North African former colonies. It maintains a secular culture that allows no place for religion in schools and civic life, which supporters say encourages a common French identity but critics say contributes to alienation in some communities.

The Paris attack in November was the bloodiest among a number in France and Belgium in the past two years. On Sunday, a weary nation had breathed a sigh of relief that the month-long Euro 2016 soccer tournament had ended without serious incident.

Four months ago, Belgian Islamists linked to the Paris attackers killed 32 people in Brussels. Recent weeks have also seen major attacks in Bangladesh, Turkey and Iraq.

US President Barack Obama condemned what he said “appears to be a horrific terrorist attack”. In televised remarks he later said the US would stand with France and keep up the fight against ISIS: “We will not be deterred. We will not relent.”

On social media, ISIS supporters celebrated the high death toll and posted a series of images, one showing a beach purporting to be that of Nice with white stones arranged to read “IS is here to stay” in Arabic.

(Reuters)

A Deadly Cocktail of Alienation and Radicalism Fuels Terrorism in France

The plethora of security agencies in France results in poor coordination of information and tactics which leads to intelligence failure

People gather near flowers and candles left as tribute to mourn the deaths of 84 people in Nice, France. Credit: Reuters

The attacker could not have chosen a more symbolic or opportune moment. A beautiful summer evening on the French Riviera town of Nice, home to the rich and famous; the end of a national holiday with fireworks and dancing in the streets.

Jumping police barriers to enter pedestrian zones, driving at break-neck speed on the pavement, tearing down the Promenade des Anglais, a beautiful seafront avenue in Nice, 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, ploughed through crowds gathered to witness the fireworks display, crushing 84 men, women and children under his tyres. What was a celebratory holiday evening turned into a terrifying nightmare.

For many French citizens this Bastille Day marked a reprieve from the horrific 2015 terrorist attacks that claimed 147 lives, holding out the promise of a fresh start. Bastille Day celebrates the 1789 revolution that put an end to the monarchy (for a while at least) and severely curtailed the power of the Catholic Church, making way for the concept of Laicite or the absolute separation of Church and State. It also heralded the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that enshrined individual rights and liberties and gave shape and consistency to the idea of the Republic, which in France is far from being a hollow concept.

La Republique Francaise is dear to practically every French citizen, a mantra spouted by politicians whatever their political stripe. But what happens when the republic falters, when it fails to respect its own tenets of liberty, equality, fraternity? Many of France’s five million or so Muslims feel hard done by. The republic has failed them, they say, treated them in step-motherly fashion.

Terrorist attacks in France since 2012 – and there have been many, have almost exclusively been carried out by disenchanted Muslim youth, for the most part French citizens, whose ideology is at sharp variance with the professed secular tenets of the State.

If this latest act of terrorism is a nightmare for those who lived or witnessed it, it is proving equally nightmarish for President Hollande and his government. The State of Emergency imposed last November was immediately extended for another three months. Confidence in this politician, whose popularity ratings stand at an abysmal 13 per cent has now all but evaporated. The government is staring failure in the face. For several years many things have been going wrong in France and successive governments, whether from the Left or from the Right, have been unable to reverse the downslide. Social unrest, unemployment and racism are all on the rise and the country’s marginalised population feels threatened. With the xenophobic, anti-Muslim right making spectacular gains in election after election, France is struggling to live up to its own high ideals.

Many failures have gone into the making of the most recent series of killings: the unwieldy nature of France’s security apparatus, the failure to create a truly cohesive society, persistent unemployment that has hit under-qualified, under-privileged and non-white people the hardest and a hardening of the racism and elitism that has always existed in French society but which has been sharpened and made bold by economic and social woes.

A recent parliamentary commission on the Paris attacks of November 2015 slammed France’s security services, pointing to avoidable intelligence failure in the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks. The famous or rather infamous Deuxième Bureau that now goes under another, far less fascinating name, has not been up to the task of keeping French citizens safe, the commission said. There have been a total of about ten terrorist attacks in France between the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo that wiped out the satirical weekly’s editorial board and the latest carnage in Nice. Many of these attacks were under-reported, at the request of the authorities, essentially because the police did not wish to cause panic and paranoia.

DGSE, DGSI, DRM, DPSD, BRGE, ANSSI–France has six intelligence agencies, often identified solely by their acronyms. They work on counter espionage, internal security, defence security, military intelligence, electronic warfare or the security of information and report to three separate ministries, interior defence and economy. However, as Georges Fenech, the President of the parliamentary commission pointed out, they do not always work in unison or share information. French anti-terrorism operations have “lead in their boots”, Fenech said, so hampered are they by heavy bureaucratic structures.

The commission suggested the merging of various agencies into a single entity along the lines of the US National Security Agency so that three elite security units namely the GIGN, Raid and BRI (acronyms again), are brought under a single cohesive command. The attack on the Bataclan concert hall could have been avoided if police and counter terrorism experts had pooled their information, the commission noted. Convicted criminals who had been radicalised in prison, like Amady Coulibaly or the Kouachi brothers, all involved in the Charlie Hebdo attack, were treated like petty thieves and not terrorism threats because of the lack of coordination in the current security and intelligence set-up, it said. Just a couple of weeks ago, the current interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve dismissed the commission’s findings out of hand. Now that a terrifying attack has taken place with several children among the victims, Cazeneuve might be forced out of office.

France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish populations. However, unlike the Jews, most Muslims are relatively new immigrants. They came to work in French factories during the post-war economic boom when the Marshall Plan fuelled Western Europe’s reconstruction. Holding down ill-paid manual jobs they were happy to live in the newly constructed factory towns on the periphery of large cities. But the oil crunch of 1973 pushed them into mass unemployment and the housing estates gradually turned into ghettos, with joblessness, poverty, under-education, cultural alienation, criminality and despair becoming the underlying leitmotif. This is what the second and third generations descended from these early migrants have inherited. Increasingly, social envy, bitterness and anger over their continued lack of integration (the blame must surely be shared by the whites and the Maghrebins) have taken a toll, prompting many of these young people to turn to radical faith, particularly Islam, as a means of acquiring self-worth, identity and assertiveness.

France’s decision to introduce legislation that effectively bans the burqa (a garment a majority of the French see as a sign of female subjection) coupled with growing racism, and Islamophobia have made the Muslims feel targeted and vulnerable. Anger, isolation, deprivation, lack of social recognition make a devastating cocktail. The Muslim community in France is not politicised enough to use the vote to get their own elected. Attempts to create a political party, Democratic Union of French Muslims (DUFM) failed and Muslims remain under represented in French institutions whether it be in parliament, diplomacy, the civil service or the military. Yes, there are success stories. But they are rare.

France appears to have been singularly unsuccessful at curbing radicalism and preventing terrorist attacks when compared to neighbouring Britain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain or Holland. True, France has many more Muslims on its soil than any of the above and its the relations with people from the Maghreb – Algeria, Tunisia Morocco — remain tainted by memories of a painful colonial past. The love-hate relationship France shares with its former, predominantly Muslim colonies in North Africa adds to the identity tensions Islam in general is experiencing.

Evidently, the problem of terrorism is not that of France alone. But given that France appears particularly incapable of identifying and pre-empting terrorist intentions, it has to ponder the particular mix of factors that are creating the social conditions in which desperate terrorist acts can be committed. Security solutions cannot resolve the problem and no amount of policing can prevent a determined terrorist from dodging surveillance. Like water, a dogged terrorist will always find his way through the cracks.

Now the country appears to be tilting increasingly towards the extreme right and political pundits say it is almost certain that the Socialist candidate, whether it is Hollande, his Prime Minister Manuel Valls or any other left wing presidential hopeful will not make it to the 2017 second ballot run off. It will be a duel between the right and the extreme right. If that happens, the vast majority of France’s Muslims, caught between radical extremist elements and extreme right wing Islamophobes will end up paying the heaviest price.