In the years after the murderous terror assaults of November thirteenth 2015 the ensuing “civil struggle” and “mass revenge”, predicted by some, did not materialise, however France can’t be complacent or too optimistic given the challenges forward, writes John Lichfield.
Ten years, already.
Thursday, November thirteenth, would be the anniversary of the Bataclan and associated killings, essentially the most murderous terrorist occasion in French historical past.
A decade later, regardless of the marathon trial of the surviving attackers in 2021-2022, the slaughter of 131 folks sitting in bars or watching a rock band, stays as unfathomable as ever.
The implied goal was not simply “France” or “the West” however a lifestyle – the precise to have enjoyable, the liberty to drink with buddies after work, the pleasure of dancing with strangers.
Several of the defendants on the trial blamed the Paris assaults on France’s involvement in 2015 within the western marketing campaign in opposition to the Islamic State in Libya.
In reality, the atrocity had been deliberate for greater than a 12 months by younger males who had been born and introduced up in France and Belgium. The Abdeslam brothers – one who blew himself up, one other who refused on the final second – ran a bar in Brussels. They drank and took gentle medication and had girlfriends, till they had been transformed or manipulated by followers of extremist Islam.
The French professional on radical Islam, Gilles Kepel, says that the assault was a part of a technique invented years earlier than to assault the “gentle underbelly” of the West by turning younger European-born Muslims in opposition to their native nations.
The hope was to impress a backlash in opposition to all Muslims by the acute Right or by nationwide governments and foment a civil struggle.
If so, we will say one factor, ten years after the Bataclan and associated murders. The technique has failed. So far.
The 12 months of the Bataclan was additionally the 12 months of Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper-Kasher grocery store siege. There had been greater than a dozen Islamist terrorist incidents in France that 12 months, and over 150 deaths.
The following 12 months noticed 5 incidents and 89 deaths, together with the truck assault on the 14 July festivities in Nice.
In 2017, there have been eight incidents and three deaths. In 2018, 4 assaults and ten deaths. In 2019, 4 assaults and 4 deaths.
In 2020, six assaults and 7 deaths. In 2021, one assault and one loss of life. The identical in 2022.
In 2023, 24 incidents and a couple of deaths. In 2024 – the 12 months of the Paris Olympics – one assault and no deaths.
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This 12 months to this point, there have been two minor assaults and one Islamophobic assault wherein two Muslims had been killed.
In earlier years, there have been scores of Islamophobic incidents in France however no large-scale, “revenge” terrorist assaults on the Muslim neighborhood and no deaths.
Complacency could be silly. The relative freedom from Islamist terrorism in France in recent times can partly be defined by the vigilance of the safety companies. Dozens of assaults have, they declare, been prevented.
But typically it’s price reporting on and analysing the information which has NOT occurred. Predictions that the Bataclan assaults, and related occasions in Britain, Germany and Belgium, had been the start of a non secular battle in Europe have proved to be false.
Remember the letter from 1,000 former French army officers in 2021, which predicted imminent racial and spiritual struggle? “France is in peril,” they wrote.
The letter was fomented by a part of the Far Right media to attempt to enhance the probabilities of Marine Le Pen within the presidential election the next 12 months. The solely struggle which started in Europe was an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, began by a Russian President admired by many on the French Far Right.
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It can be 20 years this Autumn for the reason that suburban riots, which started within the multi-racial suburbs north of Paris and unfold throughout the nation. The same outbreak, shorter however much more intense, occurred in 2023 after a younger man of Arab origin was shot by a policeman after he ignored crimson visitors lights in Nanterre, north of Paris.
Neither of those occasions – though described as “intifadas” in international media – had been political or spiritual. They had been, partly, racial. They had been pushed by a hatred of authority and the police by the alienated youth of France’s multi-racial suburban ghettoes. They will occur once more.
READ MORE: ANALYSIS: Will the riots really change something in France?
The alienation within the suburbs supplies some potential recruits for extremism, however the nice majority of the youngsters who attacked colleges and libraries and sports activities centres in 2023 or 2005 had been as a lot out of the management of the novel Islamists as their lecturers or the police.
Ten years after the Bataclan, there isn’t a room for complacency and maybe little motive for optimism. Extremist Islam remains to be at work in France. The Muslim-baiting Far Right has an opportunity of taking energy on the subsequent presidential election in 2027.
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But the racial-religious calamity predicted by some commentators and politicians has not materialised.
The mindless slaughter on 13 November 2015 horrified the good majority of Muslims in France. It provoked no widespread starvation for revenge in French non-Muslims.
That is the most effective lesson to take from this depressing anniversary.
