France in Conflagrations

By

eliesmith@yahoo.com

Perhaps it would have been better to specify that, the chaos and rioting took place only on the outer edges of the bright and glamorous French capital, Paris.

However, since it was certain that similar scenes will spread to other parts of the country; there is therefore no exaggeration with the lead of this article.

And in deed the ugly scenario did spread to other parts of France, notably in the suburbs of  the provincial towns and cities of Amiens, Bordeaux , Lile, Rennes ,Marseilles, Strasbourg and Toulouse which all have the same ethnic mix and social problems of the towns encircling the French capital. 

In total, the chaos has affected 300 towns amongst which the star ones are those specified above.

Paris is the capital of a strong Napoleonic central state and any incident around or within it is likely to be a prelude to what could happen nationally.

History is a strong testimony to that direction, from the revolution that brought about the fall of the French monarchy in 1779 to the 1968 student rebellion; they all began in Paris or in its many satellite towns.

Concerning the 1968 rebellion of French students, they never wanted more liberty as most of their leaders do claim today, but it was rather a quest for a freedom to lead a free and perverse sexual life.

The rebellion was ignited and piloted by a German student by name Daniel Cohn Berndict who is today a European Member of Parliament, representing the German Green Party.

One note worthy detail about the 1968 rebellion was that, it took away the job of France’s dictator at the time, late General Charles De Gaulle.

But it is not certain whether this present one with an entirely different demand will have the same effects on the jobs of Jacque Chirac or that of his energetic Interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy.  

By the time that this article was completed, the rioting and chaos that follows such occasions had entered its 12^th day and was encroaching within the French capital exempted from trouble for the past11 days since its satellite towns began sliding into pandemonium.  

President Jacque Chirac’s appeal on Sunday November 6^th which was relayed massively in both the electronic and print media has fallen on deft ears.

In addition to Mr Chirac’s appeals, it is not clear whether measures aimed at bringing about calm and solution that the Prime Minister Dominique Galouzoh Rene Marie François De Villipin will be proposing today Monday November 7^th will be of any necessity to organised groups who have become not only intrepid but more assertive.

The outcome of the current troubles in France is almost defying any prediction made by the most brilliant of analysts.

Along with the fact that, the commission of inquiry headed by the Chief Judge of the Bobigny High court, located on the outskirts of Paris has not yet published the official findings on why the three teenagers alleged to be running away from the Police eventually met with death, where two died.

Preliminary Toll

In such circumstances, what prevail are the activities of the rumour mills and the tons of contradictory misinformation that its produces, which does little to contain the passions but instead inflames it the more.

That was just what took place; the chaos and rioting which began in the town of Clichy-sous-Bois had spread like wild fire to 20 towns ringing the capital.

The toll of the destruction was also colossally high, even though it promises to break records in term of vandalism from all indications.

According to Police reports that has been corroborated by the Press, 544 cars and commuter buses were burnt in Paris or in those affected satellite towns and 200 other cars had the same fate in the provincial towns and cities afore mentioned. A figure which now stands at 4500 cars set ablaze around the country and will rise higher as the commotion continues.

Besides the burning of cars and commuter buses, the rioters injected another ambivalent and equally lethal twist in their destruction spree. They have torched half of all the little presence of companies within their reach which was located in their zone and also inflaming all buildings representing state authority.

The situation on the periphery of Paris was akin to a war zone with shells of burnout cars, barricades, Police in riot gears and children as young as 10, throwing stones and petrol bombs, while Police shielded behind their shields, responded with a mixture of tear gas and rubber bullets. 

Even the eight thousand five hundred French military police, claimed by authorities before the incident to be the best in the world in urban warfare, that were drafted in to support the traditional riot Police had no visible effects on the rampaging youths.

It also still not clear whether the extra one thousand five hundred reservists called in by the Prime minister to back up the current forces on the field, would have been of any aid if the 1955 special law used during the Algerian war for independence was not invoked.

This law, which is a mild state of emergence appeal, gives powers to local law enforcements officers, known in France as prefects or Governors in the US to implement law and order.

These local authorities now have the power to introduce dusk to dawn curfews in affected areas...

In the chaos rocking France presently, something whose consequences is set to have dangerous reverberations has shown its ugly heads firmly up.

They are the role that Islamic clerics which must be pointed out, with the support of the government, have assumed for themselves in this palaver. 

Clad in their long white robes and moving from streets to street, these unarmed bearded Mullahs, have been chanting God is great in their appeals to the rampaging youths to stop their violence.

Approximate Causes

Rioting broke out on the 27^th of October in the town of Clichy-sous-Bois after three teenagers that some claim were afraid of being chase by Police men on patrol leapt over a fence, then ran into an electric transformer to hide, where instead, two died of electrocution.

The third one, who was seriously wounded, was taken to the hospital and when the news of the deaths of his friends made rounds in the neighbourhood, protest by infuriated youths began which later on transformed into violence.

Police began running battles with the exasperated youths and the usual hide and seek within the streets and buildings of the town continued till dawn.  

Every one thought that, the annoyance as usual will subside, what nobody ever thought was the magnitude it was to assume nationally, whereby angry youths have started attempting to burn down church buildings.

However, confrontations between the Police and youths in towns located on the fringes of main French cities are common features.

With the former claiming that, they are being prevented from doing their jobs, while the latter’s own reply are that, Police checks are rarely professional, but carried out on racist basis, because they are either north Africans, Black Africans or afro-Caribbeans.

In this table tennis match of accusations and counter accusations, it is very difficult rule on who is honest or the winner of the game.  Nevertheless, one thing which is true in France is that, violence is well established.

As concerns the causes of the current violence, some people are accusing the French minister of interior to have fuel the anger of the youths, through his used of rightful words, but that in France, it is a new thing, that is regarded as crude, and thus term incendiary and offensive to those they are targeted to.  

What a bizarre way of craving for respect for people who have no respect, but are bended at causing havoc and the  humiliation of state  authority, with the sole aim erecting their own order in parts of the nation.

On the other hand, some say the presence of Mr Nicholas Sarkozy a day after the rioting in Clichy-sous-Bois on the 8 PM television news, to declare that law and order will be restored by all means in the affected areas was not warranted.

Absurd daily crimes

Nevertheless, situations were children or youths get killed from gangs or intra family and extra family violence are very common in the towns and all the suburbs around the main centres of France, to an extent that, they are seldom reported.

Almost simultaneously with the dead of the two teenagers, a white French man of about 40 years old, was beaten and killed in front of his wife and daughter watching from their car in shock  and unable to help.  This macabre incident took place at Epinay-sur-seine, another rundown town encircling Paris.

His alleged assassins were youths within the neighbourhood who never appreciated his attempt to photographs of an electric pole, therefore wanted to seize his camera, from which a brawl ensued and he was beaten and left lying in the pool of his own blood.

Four days later, in a commando style raid carried out by the irate youths, a commuter bus was set alight  and a handicapped lady who was inside  at the time of their operation, was first spread with petrol, before being set ablaze to burn like Jeanne d’arc.

This not too pretty episode took place in another ghetto town called Severan, which is also orbiting the French capital.

All these shows the fissures that exist in a country that is always proud of its social model of integration and those who really are in need of social actions and attention.

Distinctive insurrection

What made the rioting which had or has some linings of insurrections unique, was the unity manifested by the two dominant immigrant youth groups who populate the scruffy neighbourhoods belting Paris.

In the past, such solidarity was not commonplace; anger and sympathies was demonstrated not only selectively but more along ethnic, racial and national lines.

For example, Algerians demonstrated whenever one of theirs was a victim or Moroccans did the same but at times, North Africans that some do not want to be identified as Africans, demonstrated when a North African was a victim of a gang or from police brutality.

This time around, the solidarity was a truly united multi ethnic one, grouping North Africans and Moslem West Africans, an action never seen before.

Perhaps the unity came because the victims aged 15 and 17 were respectively of North West African and Moslem West African extractions. 

Or possibly, North west Africans some of whom are confusing their pigmentations similarity with those of white native French, have started to understand that, a leopard can’t change its spots, especially that, they are still considered as African natives whatever their colour.

Nevertheless, the organised way with which the rioting operated, couple with the colour and ethnic blind solidarity as mentioned above, has made French authorities and politicians who were prospering and encouraging divisions amongst immigrants living in those dishevelled suburbs encircling Paris, to suspect an external hand.

The usual suspects are the Islamic preachers and organisations that are prospering in those neighbourhoods abandoned by the government.

Furthermore, they have substituted and even organised themselves into militia groups responsible for law and order as well as providing roles that parents don’t play anymore.

Marginalisation

Another motive behind the rioting bands of young French of none native extractions or children of immigrants, could be attributed to the marginalisation that they and their parents before them are still facing in France today.

Their disgruntlement might have been incubating for so long that, it needed just a catalyst to ignite the flames that have let open the inequalities existing in a country whose leaders are fast at criticising inequalities in other countries.

However, in France like in most countries of the Euro zone, unemployment is high, but those who feel the pinch most are immigrants and their children.

The unemployment rate in France is set officially to be hovering around 10% although it is likely to be higher, however,  amongst the immigrants or the their children, who are in most cases, second and third French citizens, the figures are between 25% and 70%.

Immigrants in France are not only discriminated upon when it comes to employment, even in the attribution and offer of housing, they are unwelcome elements. And since they have the wrong pigmentations, religion and names, they fair far worse in these period of quasi economic crisis.

Absent of coherent solutions

Successive governments in France have never bothered to find any solution on why immigrants have the highest unemployment rates or why they live in houses that are at best scruffy or at worse dilapidated.

Instead, a mild apartheid has been institutionalised, whereby immigrants are parked in satellite towns around main cities, which are reminiscent to a policy practiced in France under the monarchy and even under Napoleon III which required that, labourers be place out of the main cities because they were dim dangerous.

Government presence  in those areas are at its minimum and at such, crime and criminal gangs created along ethnic lines, added to parents who have either abscond from their role or have lost all parental control over their children, fabricates there, a peculiarly inflammable organisms .

In addition, some have been living on state hand out for three generations to a point that, some children know that the profession of their parents is an unemployed.

It is a situation that has created a combustible chemistry that, even without the dead of the two teenagers any other incident would have enflamed the impoverished French suburbs as well.

Education

Some observers, as well as some politicians have been claiming that, the solution out of marginalisation faced by most none native French youths will come through education. There is no doubt about that, but the truth is that in France it is not sufficient to be educated.

In this direction, the number of immigrants going to university and coming out with degrees has grown sharply, even though it is not evenly shared amongst all youths of immigrant origin.

Education has provided contrasting fortunes in France for all those who are none native French whites and even amongst the proletarian white class, in terms of access to employment, decent housing and changing of status.

An example that education in France does not change much is the case of afro-Caribbean from the overseas territories of Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and the African Indian Ocean Islands of Mayote and Reunion, these set of French citizens who are 90% black and better educated has not registered much impact in their over role status .

Their unemployment rate in metropolitan France is higher than those of their white folks.

However, their salvation comes by crossing the channel to find and get work in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

In their native islands, the situation is far worse, because unemployment there is hovering around 80%, hence they  have the record number of people making a living out of state handouts, besides the open discrimination that they face there, that will make the complains of the irate youths in the suburbs of French cities look a child’s play.

Meanwhile, there is also a higher educational rate within the Afro-African communities in France. Precisely amongst the French-speaking Christian black Africans from the Animist and Christian sections of West Africa and the majority French-speaking Animist and Christian central Africa.

Moreover, their level of education is almost at par with that of French whites and French of afro-Caribbean ancestry. Additionally to this noticeable feat in the Animist and Christian black African population from French-speaking Africa, their educational level is equally shared amongst both genders.

While, the level of education amongst Moslems from North West Africa and Moslem West Africa is marginal amongst their male population and considerably high amongst their female population.

This lack of education within the male population of Moslem youths of both North West Africa and Moslem West Africa might partly explain why they are violent and were ring leaders in the riots that shook France and they also constitute the largest number of none native none whites in French jails.   

Even though education could arguably be the best way to help the immigrants out of poverty and also integrate them into the mainstream, this is not an easy task. For in France, to attain the bud of the society, it is not enough to obtain university degrees as point out earlier.

France a caste society

The French society is a sort of caste kingdom and well regimented and properly sealed that, red lines are hardly crossed even by white French belonging to the lower class or labour class.

All those governing and also now running large partly owned gigantic state companies are all from three elite schools in the country located in Paris.

These schools prepare all entrants who are whites from the upper class, who must also have a parent who comes from the oligarchy created after the liberation of France, is not a representation of their national motto of liberty equality and fraternity.

Most importantly and equally horrendous is the fact that, these cliques that have created a formidable old boy network, whose records are jealously kept and published annually in hard bound copies, are keen at destroying anybody who is not from their fraternities.

They could be the real hindrance to racial equality and equal opportunities in France. Hence it must be broken for France to truly change and improve for the better of all.

Consequences

Although the rioting and chaos that took place in France are fruits of long embedded frustration of a section of the population that are discriminated upon, because of their race or religion there was also the need for them to control their anger.

For the dimension that it took by vying from manifestations of justified anger when they got news of their slain friends characterised by running battles with the Police, and now to the destruction of private properties and the smallest form of industrial presence in their already poor areas.

This might lurk greater uncertainties and also drive away form of sympathies that might have existed in a section of the mainstream.

With just two years to go into parliamentary and presidential elections, most white French citizens who are registered on the voting lists could decide to vote for the Far Right party has strong bases in France currently.

Moreover, the Far Right is already gleefully surfing on the wave of general distraught, by posing as a true alternative to the present establishment that, it is true has been governing France since 1940. 

In case such circumstances occurs, which it certainly will, however presently no one knows how when, the fate of immigrants especially Moslems who live in those affected areas shall be in jeopardy.

Solution

In the present dispensation, the only salvation of France shall only come through the unity of its governing class and elites as well as from the opposition.

Name calling or blaming throwing and all sort of political opportunism must be fundamentally discarded, in a bid to mutually seek a long lasting solution and not an episodic remedy that might work immediately and die later on.

This is because for more than 30 years, none of the successive ruling Gaullist parties from the right or from the left has ever bothered to solve the marginalisation of immigrants and even French citizens from the overseas dependencies who are also facing the same social and economic problems.

Socialists who have governed, have always brought in with them a lethal solution to the problem of immigrants, by  heaping them in the towns around main cities in France where lawlessness, gangs and Islamic clerics rule with impunity, all these just in a bid to guarantee votes.

While the right wing parties have not faired any better, they also seemly consolidated what the socialist left, added to their desire to always implement draconian security measures, which guarantees their affluent white electorates residing in the heart of main cities and excluding immigrants.

At times, the right wing governments does give low profile ministerial post to the most vocal groups of immigrants, such as that of minister delegate in charge of equal opportunity, an appointee attached directly to the prime minister’s office. A position currently held by Azous Begag a French of North African ancestry.

The equal opportunity post given to Mr Begag is an exotic post like the litany that successive governments in France from left to right have created to give a semblance representation and acceptance to French of immigrant ancestry.

Furthermore, Azous Begag commands little or no respect amongst the immigrants particularly in the hoard of North West African youths who took the lead in the rampage.

Even his appeal to them for calm was like throwing water on the back of the duck or even inflamed passion just to discredit him.

His out burst against Nicholas Sarkozy seemingly orchestrated by the Prime minister who is competing with the interior minister for the 2007 presidential election did not help poor Begag, but showed only that, he has a strong selective memory or short of a sound one altogether.

This is because, his criticism of Mr. Sarkozy for using crude words, were just the same words that Mr. Begag used in 2002 to justify why the Far Right party came second in the first round of the French presidential elections.

Putting all those political infightings apart will be beneficial to ordinary French citizens who have nothing to do with the errors of their leaders. There is therefore a need for France to admit that it system has woefully failed and also that, it is time to find ways to create conducive environment for job creation.

This is because, if massive jobs are created no matter how racists the country is, there will still be chances for immigrants to get employment, an action which will make them live respectful lives and not take unemployment as a profession as it now the case.

More so, the American style affirmative action decried in France by a section of the elites needs to be implemented or tried whether through a different name. Because whatever misgiving can be attributed to the US affirmative actions, it has shown its many successes more than its weaknesses.

Meanwhile, France which is the laboratory of the French or European social model of equal opportunity has not permitted for four decades, the materialization of any intermediate or middle class amongst its large immigrant population or even from its proletarian or labour class white or none white.

Whereas affirmative action has an undoubted advantage of having produced just within four decades, deeply rooted and visible high and middle class population amongst blacks who were victims of segregation and also in other minorities such as the Latinos.

The success has been such that, there is a call today from within some blacks and whites communities alike, to abolish the mechanism through which they got  help, this in a bid to have a level playing field for all Americans.

Hiding behind equal opportunity and the French or European social model which is now a mere slogan that has failed is a sycophantic way to deny help to the most needy in the society.

In anticipating real calm, the rioting and chaos has just brought to the limelight what France has been hiding for long and also a failure to build a country at the image of it waning football team. Hopefully, the time of ostrich politics will now be buried in France.