7º Encontro Nacional da ABRI: Atores e Agendas: Interconexões, Desafios e Oportunidades
23 a 26 de julho de 2019, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Belo Horizonte – MG
Segurança Internacional, Estudos Estratégicos e Política de Defesa
HOMEGROWN “NARCO-TERRORISM”: READING THE “PARIS ATTACKS” (2015)
Gabriel Gama de Oliveira Brasilino
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro
Abstract:
This text is the result of my master’s dissertation, a discursive analysis of contemporary terrorist violence in France. As implicit in the title, I make two central claims: terrorism has its origins also in France/Europe, and not only outside their borders, as some have argued, hence it is a kind of ‘homegrown’ terrorism. Secondly, homegrown terrorism is related to drug abuse, drug-crimes, and drugs-prohibition in several ways, thus I call it ‘homegrown narco-terrorism’. Based on Lene Hansen’s post-structuralist research design developed in “Security as Practice” (2006), I chose to focus the analysis on one single event: the “Paris Attacks” of November 13, 2015, where 130 people were killed in acts of suicide bombing and mass shooting. On the other hand, I focused on several discourses, like politicians’, journalists’, scholars’, rappers’, survivors’ and first respondents’ (as presented in a film-documentary). Although this event cannot be said to represent terrorist violence in France and/or Western Europe, I do make some generalizations and relate the terrorist “attacks” to the wider international political context and debate. In sum, I present a marginal genealogical description of the “Paris Attacks”: the event, the subjects, and the discourses that circulated in mainstream media, institutions, academia, and other cultural representations of it (“terrorism”) and responses to it (anti-“terrorism”). This is not a genealogy of narco-terrorism, but genealogical descriptions helped to unveil and deconstruct current supposedly homogeneous identities and hegemonic (foreign) security policies. The argument is that narco-terrorism is discursively constructed as an antagonistic ‘Other’, the ultimate threat to international peace and security, an enemy to be destructed. However, the effects of those (inter)national security discourses, deeply dependent on war language, have not produced more security, but insecurity; thus, reinforcing the cycle of political violence, including terrorism(s) and war(s).
Keywords: terrorism, drugs, France
Introduction
This text is a reduced version of my master’s dissertation, a discursive analysis of what has been called “the Paris Attacks” in mainstream media. Generally speaking, it is a discursive analysis of contemporary terrorism and counter-terrorism in France, of the context and wider political debate in which that event took place. By discursive analysis I mean Foucault’s discourse analysis, the method and epistemological position, as presented by the French philosopher in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France – The Order of Discourse, in the English translation (FOUCAULT, 1981). In that lecture, as well as in his Archeology of Knowledge (FOUCAULT, 1971), Foucault explained his concept of “discourse”, his historical method, “archeology”, a word he would stop using, and replace, or at least combine with “genealogy”, a critical and genealogical description of the dominant discourse(s) of the present time.
In recent times, Foucault has become an often-quoted philosopher in critical international security studies (CAMPBEL, 1998; DER DERIAN & SHAPIRO, 1989; DOTY, 2003; GRAYSON, 2008; JACKSON, 2005; HANSEN, 2006; among others). Lene Hansen (2006), in particular, was fundamental for my dissertation, because she developed an intertextual research design based in Foucault’s discourse analysis. In sum, Hansen’s research design is composed by three intertextual models; the number of Selves, or discursive agents/subjects; the temporal perspective, and the number of events. Following Hansen’s methodology, I decided to base my dissertation in the analysis of one single event, “the Paris Attacks” (2015). According to Hansen, this analysis should identify the basic discourse(s) of the foreign policy debate under study, “and basic discourses are often centered around representations of identities with particular conceptual histories” (HANSEN, 2006, p. 70). In other words, “the discourses of the Self are trying to stabilize the Self’s identity”, although it is “an inherently unstable and often contested project”, (re)produced in foreign policy discourses, and re-articulated by competing ones, which can achieve a greater magnitude when the Self is not a national but a regional or civilizational one, such as ‘the West’ (p. 69), or the ‘International Community’. This dissertation has identified, for instance, that the basic foreign policy discourse related to contemporary homegrown ‘narco-terrorism’ in Western Europe, and the “Paris Attacks” in particular, has been constructed by one of the discursive agents as “fighting terrorism in the Middle East” (HOLLANDE, 2015).
Second, choosing one single event, “the Paris Attacks”, already established the temporal perspective: contemporaneity, although genealogical descriptions allowed me to expand that perspective back and onwards, providing detailed insights on the 3 structures of contemporary identities, how some of their particular aspects are deeply rooted, and “how previously important representations have been silenced and written out of the discourse of the present”, arguing that “present ‘objective’ identities are in fact contested, contestable, and hence politically decided” (HANSEN, 2006, p. 70-71).
Third, in relation to the discursive agents, they are connected to the intertextual models. Considering that I wanted to analyze the ‘official’ discourse, that brought me to mobilize Hansen’s Model 1, but I also wanted to analyze media coverage (Model 2), as well as cultural representations of the event and the context – Netflix’s film documentary November 13: attack on Paris, and Keny Arkana’s rap music album État d’Urgence – (Model 3A), and marginal political discourses such as academic interpretations of the concept and phenomenon of ‘drugs’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘counter- terrorism’ (Model 3B). So, who are the ‘Selves’ and the ‘Others’? If we say the “terrorists” are the ‘Others’, then who is the Self? The victims? French civilians? Is it France, the Nation-State, and its republican principles and values? What is the political effect of declaring that the ‘Other’ grew up in France and Belgium? That the ‘Other’ lives in the Self at home? The boundaries between self and other get blurred.
As the description of the event will show, substantial political questions could be raised about the current (foreign) security policy in France. For example: ‘What happened in Paris on November 13, 2015?’ ‘Who are the “attackers” and their victims?’ ‘What is their connection to the Islamic State in Syria’ (ISIS), and ‘Where does ISIS come from?’ ‘What about (French) State terrorism?’ ‘What are the intersections between ‘drugs’ and ‘terrorism’’? Those are relevant questions for both IR Theory and international politics, but there are limitations for this project to answer all of them. Actually, the goal of the dissertation was not to answer but to add more questions and reflections to the current debate on contemporary terrorism in Europe. It was concerned about the link between homegrown (jihadist) ‘terrorism’ and drug (ab)use, on the one hand, and drug prohibition and ‘war on drugs’, on the other, regarding the case of the “Paris Attacks”. Beyond the case-study, there are multiple and heterogeneous intersections among discursive formations on drugs, drug abuse, drug trafficking, and contemporary terrorism.
First, there are those who have committed acts of terrorist violence under the effect of psychoactive substances, including in “the Paris Attacks”. Second, those who have committed drug-related petty and/or violent crimes, being in jail for a period (or not), and, then, recruited in a process of radicalization, jumping into terrorist action or simply expressing the intention to do so, which is extremely complicated from the point 4 of view terrorism prevention policies/politics. Third, those who use the routes used by those fleeing the trauma of civil war and state terrorism (in Syria for example), to trade ‘drugs’ and/or to enter Europe and perpetrate acts of terror. Those are facts, in need of interpretation, but the dominant discourse on terrorism complicates rather than helps to solve the political puzzles in that subject-matter, because it (re)produces orientalist, juridical-moralist, and biopolitical-hygienist stereotypes (DEL OLMO, 1990), it reinforces and normalizes the security dispositive against the subjects and subjectivities associated with those stereotypes, as if all drug addicts/dealers, especially the ones from “non-European cultures” (VAN HOUT et al., 2016), were potential terrorists.
Taking one step back, ‘drugs’ and ‘drug-addiction’ “are nothing but normative concepts, institutional evaluations or prescriptions”, suggested the French philosopher of language Jacques Derrida (1991, p. 1) in an interview on the rhetoric of drugs. Whenever we say ‘drugs’ and ‘drug addiction’ and we could add ‘terrorism’ and ‘narco- terrorism’ here, they are embedded in that institutionalized, prohibitionist, and moralist meaning (DERRIDA, 1991). In this sense, by adding the word ‘narcos’ to the concept of terrorism, it is the history of drugs and drugs-prohibition that is referred to. In that interview, as in other texts, Derrida rejects the metaphysical opposition ‘public/private’ when he writes that “the act of drug use itself is structured like a language and so could not be purely private” (1991, p. 11), and the same should be said about violent political practices, including terrorism.
Regarding the concept of home, somewhere else Derrida wrote that: “In order to constitute the space of a habitable house and a home, you also need an opening, a door and windows, you have to give up a passage to the outside world (l’étranger) (DERRIDA, 2000, p. 61). Following his suggestion, a house and a home are constituted by boundaries that regulate relationships to the outside, what comes in, what goes out. This metaphor could be extended to think the individual human body or the social ‘body-politic’, the ‘State-Nation’, the ‘International Community’, and so it could be extended to think through the construction of collective identities represented in binary oppositions such as ‘resident’/‘guest’, ‘friend’/‘enemy’, ‘us’/them’, ‘citizen’/‘immigrant’, ‘subject’/‘sovereign’, ‘French’/‘German’, ‘Franc’/‘Arab’, ‘Judeo- Christian’/‘Muslim’, ‘European’/‘Non-European’, ‘Western’/‘Eastern’, ‘Civilized’/‘Barbarian’ etc. In that sense, homegrown could mean French- or European- grown, where it is specified the kind of house in which Narco-Terrorism grows, the identities of those who live inside/outside that house, who watches the doors, windows, borders, and where the political boundaries are drawn. In a word, it specifies whose 5 history and which contingent and historical power relations we are talking about.
‘Homegrown’ is an expression often used in anti-prohibitionist narratives associated with growing weed – mainly cannabis, coca, and opium – at home as an act of resistance against the imposed system of prohibitions and controls which dates back to the early XXth century. It means resistance not only against the repressive anti- drugs “law-enforcement” (BENJAMIN, 1978; DERRIDA, 1992) 1, which restricts the rights of those who need the plants and their derivatives for medical treatment, religious rituals, or recreational purposes, guaranteed in most liberal-democratic Constitutions2, but also the capitalist system of production and consumption, in which profit is what is ultimately envisaged, and not the health, well-being or spiritual needs of consumers. In this sense, growing weed at home could be seen as a way to say No to State regulation of one's own body, needs, and desires, as well as No to the drug cartels and to the – on the making – capitalist State regulation of the ‘drugs’ market.
‘Homegrown terrorism’, in that sense, would mean conceiving, planning, organizing, producing terrorist violence in the space of the house, that is, the terrorist’s own home, or France/Europe, although it is never a purely private thing. It would also mean resistance against the repressive and racist anti-drugs and anti-terrorism law- enforcement, resistance against State violence, including State terrorism, (socio- economic) exclusion, and war on ‘drugs’ and ‘terrorism’. Put differently, ‘homegrown’ is an expression often used with reference to ‘drugs’, and a certain way of ‘doing drugs’. It is to that way of life that I am referring to when I write the expression Homegrown Narco-Terrorism, and not the current dominant meaning of the concept3, which can be
1 In Benjamin’s definition, law enforcement is the condition of possibility for the monopoly of violence, in the sense that, “perhaps”, “law’s interest in a monopoly of violence vis-à-vis individuals is not explained by the intention of preserving legal ends but, rather, by that of preserving the law itself; that violence, when not in the hands of the law [drugs and arms trade; terrorism], threatens it not only by the ends that it may pursue but by its mere existence outside the law” (1978, p. 281). Reading Benjamin, Derrida (1992) argues that what links law to justice is violence, and the critical issue that remains open is evaluating and justifying violence in itself, simply the means, whatever its ends (p. 5). To guarantee our rights, for Derrida, we need to maintain such an alien relation to law (home-growing ‘drug’-plants; violence as legitimate resistance) that we are responsible for that it excludes (the right to privacy; health treatment; religious expression; and the right to a general strike and to revolutionary violence).
2 Barros & Peres (2011) argue, for example, that the criminalization drugs is unconstitutional, because it harms the equality principle, for criminalizing consumers of selected drugs, while consumers “licit” drugs are not criminalized; the principle of lesivity, for criminalizing a conduct that doesn’t hit other persons but the consumer and his/her health; the right to intimacy and private life, pronounced in Illuminist discourses and conserved in the Declaration of Human Rights; and self-mutilation, like suicide, is not a crime (p. 18).
3 See point 2, item ‘c’ in page 9 below. 6 deeply negative and dehumanizing, especially when used to identify a person or a group of people. When I write it with quotation marks it is in that dominant sense.
In other words, the effect of naming someone a narco-terrorist is the almost automatic authorization of the use of “legitimate” violence to deal with him or her. The point here is to deconstruct and re-signify the term to mean a kind of political violence that, yes, is usually referred to as “terrorism”, but is not only “terrorism”. A kind of political violence that is very often related to the use, abuse, commerce, prohibition and war on ‘drugs’. One of the main differences here is that the prohibition of ‘drugs’ could be said to be unconstitutional, or illegitimate, especially for the negative effects and social costs it has produced – i.e. selective mass incarceration – whereas the prohibition of terrorist violence is not a problem in itself, though the normative question of its legitimacy remains highly open and disputed: when is (terrorist) political violence legitimate? The main similarities, on the other hand, beyond the fact that both drugs and terrorism grow at home, has to do with the fact that homegrown terrorist violence, like growing weed, is generally a political action of resistance, which is not to say terrorist violence is legitimate.
Derrida is thinking the conditions of possibility for a self-critical discourse, the possibility of decentring, and creating a new status of language in the human sciences, that is, a new language with no privileged reference, object, subject – sovereign Man; God; the State – no special origin, or absolute ‘archia’ (ASHLEY, 1989; DERRIDA, 1992; 1997). Reading any concept (‘anarchy’, ‘war’, ‘terrorism’, ‘drugs’, ‘security’), any text, event (i.e. the “Paris Attacks”), institution, or (racialized) bodies through deconstructionist lenses would mean, then, avoiding fixed meanings, it would mean showing their contingent and heterogeneous historicity, deconstructing hierarchical binary oppositions and their epistemological foundations, namely “the concept of the epistémè and logocentric metaphysics – within which are produced, without ever posing the radical question of writing, all the Western methods of analysis, explication, reading, or interpretation” (DERRIDA, 1997, p. 46). By deepening the problem of authorship, or signature, Derrida showed how fictional the idea of a unified subjectivity is, whereas a comprehensive reading, or a complete knowledge is understood as an illusory desire (DERRIDA, 1992; 1997; SHERRATT, 2005). Derrida’s project becomes more interesting, Yvonne Sherratt suggests, if we consider it less as an approach, and more as a theoretical play that shows where hermeneutics may leave us.
Following this logic, why should we reduce the discussion on terrorist violence to religious fundamentalism, jihadist groups and subjects, immigration and international 7 security policies? We shouldn’t. My suggestion, following Derrida’s call for a new language, is that we deconstruct and re-signify the concept of “Narco-Terrorism”, showing how its orientalist and colonialist meaning has produced the political effect of locating terrorist and drug-related violence outside home, in the (Middle) East and the (Global) South, even when it has been located in the margins of France and Europe. Also following Derrida’s rhetoric, the point is not simply to locate it at home in the hands of national (in)security agents, but to displace the conditions of possibility for political violence. By adding the idea of homegrown to the concept we call attention to the domestic, homegrown origins of contemporary “Narco-Terrorism” in Western Europe, which doesn’t mean domestic only, since our concept of home already brings the notion of crossing borders. Neither is the domestic population affected equally. France has demonstrated to be a house that promises liberté, égalité and fraternité to all, but has delivered selective political violence for some indeed.
In sum, the central claims of this dissertation are:
1) Terrorism grows at home (France/Europe):
a) The “Paris Attackers” were mainly French, Belgium and/or European citizens. It made no sense to close French borders and to (re)enforce anti-immigration laws and war-like policies inside/outside home;
b) Terrorism also grows outside home, of course, especially under the influence and command of clandestine political organizations such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh. In this sense, fighting those organizations outside home would make sense, but making a war out of it, including airstrikes on civilian areas, may have the desired effect of eliminating them, at least provisionally, but it will also instigate more fear, hate, and jihadist attacks at home, it will fuel terrorist violence as resistance to State terrorism.
2) Homegrown ‘terrorism’ and ‘drugs’ are interrelated:
a) Many of those who have committed terrorist violence in France/Europe, including the “Paris Attackers”, have also committed drug-related violence, and/or drug- related crimes – ranging from simply drug use, or possession, to drug trafficking and more violent crimes such as gun battles between rival gangs, or between gangs and police. The point here is not that drugs alone are the cause for violent crimes, but rather drugs-prohibition, and the implementation in France of the repressive international system of drugs-prohibitions and controls is also part of the problem, a relevant one. In other words, the problem is not only ‘drugs’ themselves, but also the way the “drug-problem” has been dealt with, because it has not diminished drug abuse, 8 drug trafficking and drugs-related crimes, as it has been promised in dominant discourse, but it has rather worsened the problem. Making myself clearer: especially for its repressive and selective, or racist bias, anti-drugs securitized and militarized policies and politics have helped to create the conditions of possibility for terrorist violence, in the sense that the people involved in terrorist violence, generally young men, do it, in part, as a reaction not only to State terrorism outside France, but also to State terrorism, violence, exclusion, marginalization, and war on ‘drugs’/ ‘terrorism’ inside home.
b) Many terrorists ‘do drugs’ just before ‘doing terrorist violence’. In the “Paris Attacks”, for instance, some of them would have injected synthetic opioids, which is obviously not the main and only ‘illicit’ drug used by them, but indicates a more direct link between drug use and terrorist violence, in the sense that the ‘terrorists’ would have wanted a painkiller, something to make them be alert, to alter the senses, and so on. This is not to say all ‘terrorists’ are drug addicts, much less that drug addicts are potential ‘terrorists’, but rather that they might have used drugs, which adds more challenges not only to security agents dealing with the situation, but also to research and analysis of the phenomenon of homegrown terrorism. We need to understand that ‘drugs’ and ‘terrorism’ are related if we want to move the discussion on terrorism further.
c) As with the drug cartels in Colombia, where the expression “narco-terrorism” generally refers to, in the sense that the drug cartels there had already mobilized terrorist violence to confront State attempts to stop them, and thus (re)establish their business, ‘terrorist’ subjects, groups, and/or clandestine political associations have also already relied on drugs-trafficking to fund their criminal activities, such as buying and trading guns, ammunition, and other war equipment; making bombs, and so on (BJÖRNEHED, 2004). And there are several nuances here.
3) War against ‘terrorism’, war against ‘drugs’:
The responses to both problems, expressed in the dominant discourse, have resembled each other, in the sense that war and militarization have been privileged as the official response to the “Paris Attacks”, and to “clandestine” political violence more generally. This is why terrorism and drugs are major topics in security studies in the field of International Relations. In this process, however, a language and a grammar of war became fundamental, extremely useful, and, thus, instrumental for political ends and purposes. In this sense, that is another reason why studying language is important to understand violence – and we can, and should, qualify violence with adjectives such 9 as political, terrorist, (il)legitimate violence, etc. As argued Derrida, violence is structured like language, a very unstable, disputed, and often resignified structure. Similarly, Foucault has argued that changes in the order of discourse represent changes in the social order. Perhaps, the change we are talking about here is a change in the political means to achieve certain political ends. Terrorism, be it State terrorism or terrorism by “clandestine” political organizations, has become a disputed means in contemporary international politics. If we want to talk about contemporary terrorism in France, we need to talk about war, the war on both ‘drugs’ and ‘terrorism’, and “war as politics” (FOUCAULT, 2003).
Now, I would like to describe what happened in “the Paris Attacks”. The idea here, following Foucault’s critical and genealogical descriptions of discourse, is to provide a reading of the present, tracing some of its multiple and heterogeneous lines of descent. The next section puts together some descriptions of “the Paris Attacks” provided by mainstream media and the film-documentary mentioned above, and some reflections about homegrown ‘narco-terrorism’ and ‘counter-terrorism’ based in the relevant academic literature the dissertation is based on. In this sense, in the conclusions, this text considers the effects of the dominant discourse on ‘narco- terrorism’ in France, considering the problem of suspicion, for example, and brings up the reflections of one of the major voices in the current debate on terrorism and counter terrorism in France, Olivier Roy, to see how he could help in our goal of deconstruction, denaturalizing and re-signifying the concept of terrorism.
“The Paris Attacks” (2015)
Broadly speaking, “the Paris Attacks” consisted of suicide bombings and mass shootings at bars and restaurants, outside a football stadium, and inside the famous Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people were killed, and a hostage taking took place, including a brief negotiation with the police, who entered the hall and killed one of the ‘shooters’ minutes before the other two suicide-bombed themselves. At the end, 130 people were killed, and hundreds injured in a terrorist performance orchestrated by at least 11 men, supposedly on behalf of the Islamic State in Syria, or ‘Daesh’. More specifically, according to descriptions provided by the mainstream media (WASHINGTON POST, 2016; NEW YORK TIMES, 2015b; BBC, 2015c; 2016), this is what happened:
Stade de France, 9:20 p.m.: “An explosion boomed through the stadium. A suicide bomber had blown himself up outside, killing one passerby”. 10
Rue Alibert, 9:25 p.m.: “Minutes after the first bomb blast, two gunmen stepped out of a black SEAT Leon car in front of Le Carillon, a modest cafe-bar in the city center, and started shooting. They then walked across the street and fired at the restaurant Le Petit Cambodge, or Little Cambodia”, killing 15 people and injuring another 10.
Casa Nostra, moments later: “On Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, gunmen with assault weapons stepped out of the same black car and opened fire at an Italian restaurant called Casa Nostra, a nearby cafe, La Bonne Bierre, and a laundromat”, killing 5 people and leaving 8 injured.
Stade de France, 9:30 p.m.: “A second explosion rang out at the stadium – and it still largely didn’t occur to the cheering crowd that anything was amiss”, one man killed himself in a suicide bombing.
La Belle Equipe, about 9:36 p.m.: “Police said the black SEAT Leon pulled up at La Belle Equipe, a popular eatery in Paris’s 11th arrondissement, an area filled with restaurants and bars”. The gunmen fired for at least three minutes, then they got back in the car, one witness said, leaving 19 people killed and 9 injured.
Bataclan, 9:40 p.m.: “Police said a black Volkswagen pulled up in front of the Bataclan concert hall, a Paris landmark since the 19th century. Three gunmen entered the hall and started shooting. Witnesses said the shooting lasted about 15 minutes, then the gunmen held the remaining concertgoers hostage for the next two hours. When police finally stormed the concert hall at 12:20 a.m., the attackers blew themselves up”, leaving 89 people killed and more than 200 injured.
Stade de France, 9:53 p.m.: “As police were responding to the Bataclan, they received word of a third explosion near the soccer stadium. A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a McDonald’s restaurant, but no one else was hurt. By then, spectators at the stadium had learned, mainly through messages on their phones, that Paris was under attack” (WASHINGTON POST, 2016, p. n/a).
According to police reports, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 29 years old, Belgian of Moroccan descent, is supposed to have coordinated the attacks in association with Salah Abdeslam and his brother, Brahim, French nationals born in Brussels who grew up in Molenbeek, “a rundown district of Brussels with a substantial Muslim population”, 11 described by some Belgian officials as a “breeding ground for jihadists”, or even a “Jihadist hotbed” (BBC, 2015c; 2016). “Brahim owned a bar in Molenbeek, which, some reports say, was managed by his brother Salah; people who knew them there have said both men drank alcohol and smoked drugs”, and “a police report obtained by AFP suggests the bar was shut down in early November because police believed customers were smoking marijuana there” (BBC, 2016).
According to the Minister of Interior, Abaaoud “had been implicated in four out of six foiled attacks” in Paris, and he is believed to have joined the Islamic State in early 2013, although “it is not clear when he became radicalized” (BBC, 2016). And according to The Washington Post (2016), Abaaoud was killed by the Police at the district of Saint-Denis, in an apartment near the Stade de France, after a seven-hours siege, which began at 4:16 a.m., and a long gun battle. His fingerprints were found on a Kalashnikov left in the Seat car abandoned in Montreuil, (BBC, 2016). He “was one of Europe’s most wanted men before the Nov. 13 attacks, but he slipped from the radar of intelligence services and was widely thought to be in Syria, where he starred in grisly propaganda videos. One counter-terrorism expert said he had “a big role” in recruiting French-speaking jihadists” (WASHINGTON POST, 2016).
Brahim Abdeslam exploded himself up near one of the attacked restaurants, and his brother Salah was captured in Brussels “after a massive manhunt. Authorities suspect he helped with logistics during the Paris Attacks”, although his precise role in the “attacks” is unclear (WASHINGTON POST, 2016). According to BBC reports, “Dutch police said they had detained Salah Abdeslam briefly in February, fining him 70 Euros for possession of cannabis”, whereas “some reports have said he spent time in prison for robbery where he met suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud” (BBC, 2015c).
A Syrian passport on the name Ahmad Almohammad was found near one of the suicide bombers at Stade de France but was later deemed fake by authorities. “His fingerprints matched those of an asylum seeker who arrived from Turkey to the Aegean island of Leros with 198 Syrian immigrants on Oct. 3. He was later found to have gone through Athens, Macedonia and Serbia; his identity remains unknown” (WASHINGTON POST, 2016). And Bilal Hadfi, 20 years old, French national, who “according to two European intelligence officials” had fought in Syria; “Belgian law enforcement knew he returned from the Middle East to Belgium, but couldn’t find him” (WASHINGTON POST, 2016). So, in a way or another, according to mainstream media, which are part of the 12 current dominant discourse on terrorism, the “attackers” have ties with the Islamic State in Syria.
Another team was involved in the Bataclan mass shooting, hostage taking, and suicide bombings. Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29 years old, French national, “a former petty criminal with family ties to Algeria, is believed to have crossed into Syria in 2013, a French police official said. The Associated Press reported he lived with his family in Chartres and frequented the Anoussra Mosque” (WASHINGTON POST, 2016). BBC’s report adds that he got convicted eight times but spent no time in jail. “A local Islamic association leader said he showed no signs of being an extremist. […] In 2010, however, he was identified by the French authorities as a suspected Islamic radical and his details were entered in a database” (BBC, 2016).
Samy Amimour, 28 years old, French national, “the former bus driver was questioned by French officials in 2012 about links to a network of terror sympathizers”, prosecutors said. “He was placed under judicial supervision in France in 2012 after attempting to travel to Yemen. After Amimour went to Syria, his father told Le Monde that he tried but failed to get him to return home in June 2014” (WASHINGTON POST, 2016). And “it took more than three weeks for French authorities to identify the third Bataclan bomber”, Foued Mohamed Aggad, 23 years old, until his DNA was matched with his “Moroccan-born mother” in Strasbourg (WASHINGTON POST, 2016). He “was initially lured to Syria by one of France’s most infamous jihadist recruiters”, Mourad Fares, French media reported (WASHINGTON POST, 2016).
Unfortunately, in trying to understand and explain to its audience “what happened?”, mainstream media became obsessed with uncovering the identity of the terrorists, as if all the answers were there to be found by well-intentioned journalists. One effect of such a reading is that, for the unadvised reader, the perpetrators of the “Paris Attacks” were irrational fundamentalists and immoral drug addicted criminals Muslims. This narrative legitimizes and normalizes not only anti-“terrorism”, but also anti-“drugs” juridical-political discourses, including the “war on drugs”/“terrorism” both domestically, in its selective and racist law enforcement, and inter-nationally, since all of them are tied to the outsider enemy, the Islamic State in Syria. Second and related, by using the expression “Jihadist hotbed”, referring to Molenbeek, “an area where radical Salafist ideology has flourished among some young Muslims”, BBC (2016) makes an almost automatic link between Islam and terrorism, not mentioning a word about the historical formation of that ideology. In this sense, for the mainstream media, it doesn’t matter if the perpetrators of “the Paris Attacks” were French, Belgian, or 13
European citizens, being second (or third) generation immigrants automatically turns them in suspects, especially if their origins trace back to the Middle East and North Africa.
Although associated with ISIS in the mainstream media narrative of the event, part of the dominant discourse on ‘narco-terrorism’ in (Western) Europe, the perpetrators were European citizens; the team “leader” grew up in a district of Brussels that represents at large what happens to not-so-welcome immigrants in (Western) Europe (HARI, 2015; FASSIN, 2013; WACQUANT, 2007). Following Asad (2007, p. 26), there is no doubt that ‘terrorist’ violence are criminal and create a sense of fear, feelings of vulnerability and insecurity among a civilian population, but recognizing ‘terrorism’ also signifies a political purpose, or motivation, helps to deconstruct the thinking of terrorism simply as an illegal and immoral form of violence, while recognizing the origins of its political motivations not only in resistance to a colonial past of wars and domination, but also in everyday internal colonialism and orientalism, to denaturalize the thinking of terrorism simply as a nihilistic Islamic violence lying somewhere else (l’étranger).
“Attack on Paris”
The film-documentary “November 13: Attack on Paris” (“13 Novembre: Fluctuat Nec Mergitur” in the French version), a Netflix original production, directed by Gédéon Naudet and Jules Naudet – also directors of “9/11” – brings a different narrative about the “Paris Attacks”. According to the synopsis, “Survivors and first respondents share personal stories of anguish, kindness and bravery that unfolded amid the Paris terror attacks of Nov. 13, 2015” (NETFLIX, 2018). It is, then, a narrative constructed upon those real personal stories, memories and experiences. They start telling us (the audience), in an interview-like scenario, how that day started as a regular day, a heated Friday night in one of the biggest capitals of Western Europe. Some of them went to the Stade de France to watch the friendly match between France and Germany; some went to the Bataclan to watch Eagles of Death Metal’s rock concert, while others came out to eat, drink and have a good time with their friends and families at the Belle Equipe, Le Petit Cambodge, Le Carillon, Casa Nostra, and McDonald’s. 14
Nonetheless, in a given point of the narrative, what was introduced as a regular day like any other became “a nightmare”, “an horror film” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018)4.
“There is no way to describe it”, one of the survivors said – and this seems to be, besides focusing on the victims, one of Naudet & Naudet’s central framing in the film, that is, people trying to put into words what they saw, felt, heard, smelled, experienced. “Explosions”, “shootings”, “terrorism”, “war” and “massacre” (especially for Bataclan) were some of words used to describe it (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018), but many of them couldn’t find the right words. Bernard Cazeneuve (Ministre de L’Intérieur), for example, has described it as a “nightmare, monstrosity, real or anything” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). “Are you going to wake up?” crossed his mind, “because what was happening was too violent and without precedent” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). More news in every two minutes, “each time more tragic, dreadful, and insupportable” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). For Cazeneuve, the central political issue was the “responsibility to maintain the Republic steady, that night was reduced to it”, not neutralizing criminals, but remaining strong (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). If we go back to Foucault (2003), we’ll see how he understood State reason as exactly that: conservation, especially in face of external aggression or invasions.
According to the Minister, “a suicide squad, divided in groups, probably coordinated […] had decided to spread terror throughout the capital” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). Someone else reported seeing the “shooter walking with his gun, and the car taking off”, it was an “AK or other automatic” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). “His eyes were determinate and full of hatred”, said another person interviewed in the film (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). An upstairs neighbor from one of the bars said it called his attention “the violence and how powerful the man was” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). “They were there to kill everybody, period”, suggested one of the victims (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). In one of the bars, for example, with a capacity for 28 consumers, 21 were dead at the end.
Three men entered in Bataclan heavily armed, bombs included, and started shooting randomly again. Here, safety/security concerns get much more explicit in the survivors’ discourse, who threw themselves on the ground and played dead. “It was the only position available”, “no moving”, “no choice”, just like in the bar (Le Petit Carrillon) where one of victims told she doubled her bell towards her knees “to be the smallest possible”. “To get down” was the first reaction for many”, “to remain imperceptible”,
4 Quotations from the film are unattributed or attributed in a more general way. All translations and quotations are under my responsibility. 15
“together” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). What does it mean for safety, security (as State politics of protection), and defense strategy? Should States remain discrete and friendly, instead of standing up aggressively, intervening in foreign lands? If the goal is survival, yes, States should remain low profile, but (modern) State reason is also characterized by law-enforcement, and expansion, meaning law-making, war-making and colonialism (BENJAMIN, 1978; FOUCAULT, 2003; 2007; WALKER, 2017).
If the goal is to enforce a certain political order, which, beyond language (including law) is founded on violence (CHAMAYOU, 2012; DERRIDA, 1992), then, also yes, the critical issue being how much violence should be authorized in law- enforcement, the rules of engagement law-enforcing agents should respect, including the specific rules for dealing with the foreigners, for example in border controls, airports, refugee camps, etc., that is, at the doors and windows of home. Finally, if the goal is expansion, like creating new anti-terrorism legislation, waging war against ‘Daesh’, and intervening in foreign territories, then the answer is no, the critical issue being, not simply how much violence is authorized, but whether such an expansion is legitimate in the first place, since (extreme) violence is always presupposed in (liberal) wars (ASAD, 2007; DER DERIAN, 2009; DILLON & REID, 2009; KAHN, 2008).
Three men, three machine guns plus too many ammunitions against 1,500 unarmed people. Here are some of the words and expressions used to describe what people felt in the Bataclan: fear; horror; dread; awe; powerlessness; sadness; agony; panic; loosing perception of space; shock; blank (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). Some of them detailed the smell of blood, iron and gunpowder together. Many of them, including at the bars and restaurants, described how there was suffering screaming and silence at the same time, how that was “the worst moment” or “feeling”, when there is a sudden silence and, then, the sound of reloading guns. “We should try [to escape] the next opportunity” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018), one of the survivors said he had thought and told his girlfriend, expressing, perhaps an instinct of survival, of trying any available means to remain alive and safe.
Some would argue this kind of violence is ‘terrorism’ because it matches the criteria of disproportionality, that is, the terrorists didn’t give their victims the chance of legitimate, proportional struggle between equals – their victims were in disadvantage. Some would claim it is the atmosphere of fear that should be the criteria, and some others the political motivation behind such acts. As the Bataclan’s journalist neighbor has put it, if one wants a proof, a testimony of what terrorism looks like “it is necessary 16 to see how terror looks like”, but beyond seeing, survivors have reminded us it is also about smelling, hearing, feeling it.
Asta Maskaliunaite (2018) mentions Alex Schmid’s work, which analyzed 250 different definitions of terrorism, with the goal of creating a consensus:
“on the one hand to a doctrine about the presumed effectiveness of a special form or tactic of fear-generating, coercive political violence and, on the other hand, to a conspiratorial practice of calculated, demonstrative, direct violent action without legal or moral restraints, targeting mainly civilians and noncombatants, performed for its propagandistic and psychological effects on various audiences and conflict parties” (SCHMID, 2011, p. 86 apud MASKALIUNAITE, 2018, p. 30). Maskaliunaite addeds eleven aspects to this definition that need to be considered: 1) the context – whether it takes place in war or not 2) by state or non-state actors; 3) the form of violence used (i.e. suicide bombing, assassination, etc.); 4) communicational processes, that is, demands that are made; 5) the centrality of terror in terrorism; 6) civilians as the majority of victims – which are not the direct target; 7) perpetrators may be individuals, groups, networks, or clandestine actors with the support of States; 8) the motivation is political; 9) the goal is to terrorize expecting useful reactions; 10) motives are multiple; 11) it is not about isolated acts, but a campaign of violence that may lead terrorists to manipulate the political process (MASKALIUNAITE, 2018, p. 30-31). Many definitions concentrate in only 3, or 4 of them, leaving too many questions open to debate, highlighted Maskaliunaite, but in sum, “no matter how complicated in practice, analytical definitions of terrorism should contain elements of violence, political goals, and the creation of an atmosphere of fear at their core” (2018, p. 32). In effect, based on the descriptions of “the Paris Attacks”, we could argue that the eleven aspects can be identified in that event, so, we could name the “Paris Attacks” terrorism. Nevertheless, there is still the problem of the effects of naming, as mentioned in the introduction.
Terrorism was claimed to be seen by the survivors and first respondents, in part, because it was already a category available in the discursive order, like kamikaze, normalized in discourses on terrorism; like hell, in fetishized religious myths, or war in modern political ones. Once in a while such categories get pronounced. Another example is that someone described seeing a “blue and orange fog” and though it was a gas explosion (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). In Hansen’s words, that would be an implicit conceptual intertextuality, present in our memory, our unconscious, perhaps related to the Holocaust, the Syrian Civil War, and/or recent terrorist attacks in Europe. Marie Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, for her part, declared it was “a terrorist attempt that 17 targets the jounesse, people who love the whole world, who see the whole world, it hits that what makes Paris wonderful. I am talking about this notion of liberty, of valuing the other” (NAUDET & NAUDET, 2018). In fact, Netflix and the Naudet brothers have also tried to make that a central issue in the documentary: fraternité. In many scenes one can see survivors, first respondents and people on the streets helping the victims, doing what they could.
Considering the film a text to be read, and terrorism a central category in this text, those who were interviewed in this film (re)produced a set of statements re- enforcing certain rules organizing discursive formations on terrorism: it is evil and must be condemned; the responsible must be punished, including the possibility of killing them; the victims were innocent civilians, inflating, thus, the political consequences for responding to it; it was in no way legitimate, although the film doesn’t suggest any possible (political) motivation, only that “they were there to kill everybody, period”, reinforcing the ultimate antagonist threatening identification of the Other, and authorizing prior and subsequent exceptional measures to fight terrorism inside and outside home. But reading/writing such film-documentary represents another form of intertextuality, an exchange of quotations and authorizations that helped to identify what happened, and how it happened, although it didn’t help to identify who made that happen, and what were the (political) motivations, hence the need to bring other sources in my own marginal description of the event.
This narrative, with all its elements, words, expressions, categories, signs, images, etc., brings many insights to the debate on contemporary (anti)terrorism(s) in Europe. It also brings relevant discourses on security and safety. It is truly heartbreaking, making one feel a parcel of the pain, fear, terror, anger, anguish, and powerlessness those people felt that day. It also makes one feel sorry for what happened, which may not be politically useful if one wants to make a critical reading of political violence, including terrorism. These insights could be mobilized to analyze (inter)national (in)security discourses circulating around that historical event; to extrapolate supposedly fixed interpretations and to dispute the narrative on the “attacks”, on “religious”, “Islamic”, or “jihadist terrorism”, to argue that it also has its roots in ‘drugs’, drug abuse, and prohibition, thus, criminalization, militarization and war on ‘narco-terrorism’.
In sum, Netflix’s narrative is not a holistic one. It gives too much emphasis on the victims’ experiences, and not a word on the terrorists, who were they, where they came from, not even their names. Why would have they performed such acts of terror? 18
What political message did they deliver? This can only be speculative, of course, but which language isn’t? Trying to understand, to comprehend, and/or to explain to a greater audience what the motivations for this terrorist attacks were, is extremely difficult, if not impossible. It makes sense, though, not trying to do so. And focusing on the victims, survivors and first responders has its value. Nevertheless, silencing and excluding the terrorist discourse is quite dishonest and, to some extent, unhelpful. Fortunately, not all (mainstream) media provided and/or approved such reading.
So, on the one hand, silencing and excluding the terrorists, their discourse, is unhelpful, because it normalizes the idea that they were simply irrational, mad, abnormal, religious fundamentalist, extremist, radical, and criminal drug addicted. On the other, relying on the identity of such individuals, the way mainstream media did, would be misleading, because it also normalizes an orientalist, racist, xenophobic idea of them, authorizing restrictive immigration policies on people from Muslim countries, regardless of their social, economic or political situation, and other exceptional measures, like selective searches by police on the streets, religious facilities (read Muslim), and the like.
Regarding the responses to the “Paris Attacks”, we have seen, first, the solidarity and sense of duty of those who first responded to the terrorist violence, helping the injured, second, those who resisted and condemned it immediately (“Tu ne peux pas ça faire!”), and to varying degrees, depending on who was talking, and where from, those who later condemned it publicly, third, those who joined the public mourning two days later on the streets of Paris, giving strength to the families of the victims, including the families of the (young) men involved, forth, those who resisted racism, Islam- and xenophobia in the following days and months, fifth, those who were in a political position to investigate the causes and motivations for the mass shootings and suicide bombings, and to respond in accordance to the rules of the international juridical-political game.
Conclusion
As Hansen (2006) suggested, such descriptions already present us with fundamental political questions. What I wanted to show here is how those survivors and first respondents describe multiple definitions of security, safety, and survival, descriptions of practices and performances that could be mobilized to extrapolate current interpretations on foreign security policy and defense politics. Mobilizing specific discursive formations, the survivors and first respondents in the film- 19 documentary express, it is claimed, how discourses on (international) security also are formed.
Regarding the mainstream media descriptions, as Judith Butler (2004) suggested, relying on the agency, responsibility or charismatic leadership of bin Laden [or Abaaoud] for explaining the attacks are misleading, because isolating the individual would absolve us from the necessity of a broader explanation for events like 9/11, or the “Paris Attacks”. Following Butler’s suggestion, the question that must be asked is why were those men so furious in the first place? Where do they come from? Where does ISIS come from? What about French own acts of violence in the name of national security? What about French imperialism, colonialism, and war crimes in Iraq and Syria, in Algeria and Morocco? More generally, and here Butler questions the conditions of possibility for political decision-making processes, “What social conditions help to form the very ways that choice and deliberation proceed” (BUTLER, 2004, p. 16)? Why does violence come to appear as the only viable option? Those are relevant questions, worth addressing by anyone interested in analyzing political violence, transformations and discontinuities in international (in)security discourses and politics, especially the discursive formations of “war” – on “drugs”/“terrorism”.
The “Paris Attacks” happened 10 months after the “Île de France attacks”, in the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s Headquarter and a Jewish supermarket. The men involved in this “attack” declared to be associated with Al-Qaeda in Yemen, and the Islamic State of Iraq and The Levant (THE GUARDIAN, 2015a), while the ones involved in the “Paris Attacks” are charged of association with the Islamic State in Syria, who claimed responsibility on the attacks (NEW YORK TIMES, 2015c). On November 19, wrote Kim Willsher for The Guardian in England: “France has been on high alert since joining the American-led campaign of air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but nobody imagined such a bloodbath in the city” (THE GUARDIAN, 2015b). Reading Willsher’s statement, we can not understand what happened in Paris if we don’t take France’s participation in the Western US-led coalition against ISIS seriously, in other words, French responsibility in the air strikes over Iraqi and Syrian cities, which also have left civilians killed and injured.
On the other hand, Roy’s speech on the process of radicalization of young, mostly converted, Muslims in Europe (ROY, 2015); Hari’s suggestion that “homegrown jihadist terrorism” is linked to France’s extreme and racist “war on drugs” (HARI, 2015); and Willsher’s attention to the US-led campaign of airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, as a possible explanation for the “attacks” (WILLSHER, 2015), helped to denaturalize and 20 deconstruct Islamophobic and xenophobic mainstream media characterization of the “attackers”. Besides, they also helped to better understand the intersections among ‘drugs’ and ‘jihadist radicalization’, as well as the domestic origins of contemporary terrorism in France/Europe, e.g. the decision to airstrike Syria and Iraq, causing civilian deaths and injuries, has been taken at home. In that sense, Talal Asad explained that “No person who has followed the ensuing events [9/11] can doubt that the rise in jihadism and the vicious sectarian killings are closely connected with the U.S. invasion and occupation [of Iraq]” (ASAD, 2007, p. 13-14). Besides, there are several data and studies published on this theme5.
Olivier Roy gave a speech five days after the “Paris Attacks” in which he established 10 patterns of “radicalization” in Europe. For instance, “few French radicals have a connection with a mosque, while the reverse seems to be true in Austria”, but “there are always exceptions and specific cases” (ROY, 2015, p. 4). Yet, based on this information, we should question Hollande’s State of Emergency and Macron’s new law on antiterrorism, which increases police authority to conduct searches, to close religious facilities, and to restrict the movements of suspects.
Roy makes an important distinction regarding radical subjects: 1) those who jumped into action a) having reached a terrorist sanctuary – e.g. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, or previously Bosnia and Afghanistan; b) having perpetrated a terrorist attack; c) been caught in advanced stage of preparation for such; and 2) those who manifested only an intention to go to some “Jihad place”, or to do something in Europe. In sum: a radical is he or she who has done something, or is suspect of doing something radical, like perpetrating a terrorist attack, preparing for such, or going to places associated with
5 Patrick Cockburn (2014) considered, for example, that the ISIS formation could be seen as another side-effect of the US intervention in Iraq in 2003. Syria was facing a civil war and, according to Cockburn, there were internal and external suspicion, including Bashar al-Assad’s allies, that the Caliphate could consolidate its power in the region. In October 2015, Erika Solomon et al. wrote for the Financial Times that “The trade in oil has been declared a prime target by the international military coalition fighting the group”, from which ISIS has derived its financial strength, “and yet it goes on, undisturbed” (FINANCIAL TIMES, 2015). More recently, the Organization Action on Armed Violence, has suggested “the civilian death toll from air- launched explosives rose by 82%, from 4,902 in 2016, to 8,932 in 2017. The worst impacted countries were Syria, where civilian deaths increased by 55% to 8,051, Iraq, where there was a 50% increase, to 3,271, and Afghanistan, where 994 non-combatants died”. “War is moving into cities. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Russia or the US-led coalition or ground forces leading the assault, the outcome for civilians under attack is always dire”, said Airwars director Chris Woods, who also highlighted that, “even the coalition’s own figures show more civilians were killed by them in 2017 than in 2014, -15 and -16 combined”. “These figures make upsetting reading”, argued UN chair of the all-party parliamentary group on refugees, reminding that “behind the numbers are people, civilians suffering and increasingly targeted in armed conflict [and US-led military interventions]. Adults and children are being killed, maimed and bereaved, and survivors living with the psychological effects” (THE GUARDIAN, 2018). 21
‘Jihad’ – outside home. With so many European countries being the site of terrorist attacks recently, it is surprising there is none in Roy’s list.
In France, among the second category (about 7,000 people) there are 20% of less than 18-years-olds, 30% of women and 37% of converts, while the first category (about 1,500) includes far less under-age people and women, and “only” about 25% of converts (ROY, 2015). “So the issue is to know whether the second category will pass into the first, or whether it is more about “dreamers”” (p. 3). Thus, the main problem for (inter)national security could be related to the suspects – those who only manifested an intention to radicalize – and how to identify them, what Talal Asad (2007) called “official hermeneutics – an official suspicion about meaning” (p. 31), since it is always about reading signs, bodies, gestures, movements, and so on. More specifically, asks Asad, “how can one do a proper reading of signs to discover the threats posed by secret motives? In the United States, the Patriot Act, passed to deal with terrorists, provides the practical framework for undertaking such readings” (ASAD, 2007, p. 30, emphasis added). In France, we could refer to the ‘State of Emergency’ called by President Hollande, or, more recently, Macron’s new law on counter-terrorism, replacing the State of Emergency, and increasing Police – and other law enforcement agencies – authority to conduct searches, to close religious facilities and to restrict the movements of people suspect of extremist ties (INDEPENDENT, 2017, emphasis added).
In this context of several “attacks” and ‘drugs’ prohibition, law enforcement becomes “a site where a particular kind of identity is typified and dealt with” (ASAD, 2007, p. 31) – as in detention centers, airports, refugee camps, and border controls (DOTY, 2003; HUYSMANS & SQUIRE, 2009; MAGUIRE et al., 2014). In effect: “while hermeneutics doesn’t necessarily spring from hostile suspicion, it always presupposes that what appears on the surface is not the truth, and seeks to control what lies beneath. Through interpretation, it converts absence into signs” (ASAD, 2007, p. 31), and this also applies to the mainstream media emphasis on the identity of terrorists, their pictures, their non-European origins. In effect, as Herschinger (2011) has correctly put it: “Being suspected is like being a victim”, a ‘second victim’ of terrorism (p. 131), and her point is simply that evidence, and not suspicion, should base law enforcement in matters of terrorism and criminal activities.
Alternatively, we could also say this is a form of “racialization (FASSIN & FASSIN, 2006) of Islam-related elements of diversity” (AMIRAUX, 2010, p. 95), or, a form of political violence and institutionalized State racism that became somehow normalized in law enforcement in the context of drug prohibition and ‘war against 22 terrorism’. Which goes back to Hari’s interpretation that contemporary “homegrown jihadist terrorism” is linked to France’s extreme and racist “war on drugs” (HARI, 2016), to France’s law enforcement, which, as in other liberal democracies, is selective (FASSIN, 2013). For example, while Hari’s white, middle-class – illicit drugs consumer – friends “seemed to think drugs were already effectively decriminalized”, because the police don’t bother them, “French people of Arab or African descent [he] got to know told a different story” (HARI, 2016, n/p).
In France, as much as in the United States and Brazil, “the war on drugs is targeted on people of colour”, Fabrice Olivet told Hari. Fabrice described the scene in which a police officer told him “he had drugs because he was black, and he should go back to his own country” (apud HARI, 2016). “When you ask ordinary people about drugs, they always talk about Arabs, and the suburbs, and say – ‘Arabs are selling drugs. This is the problem” apud (HARI, 2016). Growing up in such an environment of constant harassment by law-enforcement agents makes that many non-white French citizens feel the State is persecuting them, and go to Islam to be protected (HARI, 2016). But this is not always a ‘choice’. Going to Islam might be a voluntary path in some cases, but as Hari himself has made clear, in an environment of rejection and marginalization, home should be anywhere one feels safe and welcome.
Getting back to problem of suspicion, according to Stuart Hall, it is not only – or at least it shouldn’t be – a question of calling out the body as the last “transcendental signifier, as if it were the mark that suspends all arguments, where all language ceases, as if all discourse were overthrown in front of this reality” (HALL, 2015, p. n/a, my translation). That is, simply accusing the police officer of being racist is “falling prey to the superficial trap that allows us to rely on the obvious, in what is manifested, and presented to us as a symptom of the appearance” (HALL, 2015, p. n/a, my translation). We need to question what lies behind the sign of the body, we need to assess the language of racism, argues Hall, “a scheme combined with stories, anecdotes, metaphors, and images that is what really constructs the relation between the body and its social and cultural space”; […] “one of the deepest and most complex cultural systems that enable us to distinguish between inside and outside, us and them, who belongs and who doesn’t” (HALL, 2015, p. n/a, my translation).
By the same caveat, we should not fall prey to the discourse of “war” – as in the “war on drugs” or the “war on terror” –, for its insistence on abstract categories such as “drugs” and “terror” is a reconstruction of war discourses (LINTON, 2015). And we should not think of discourses as opposed to each other – dominant or dominated, but, 23 rather, as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can enter different strategies, “both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, […] a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy” (FOUCAULT, 1978, p. 101). So, how to deconstruct the discourse of war (on “drugs” and “terror”) through a critical discourse analysis? Hari’s argument is very helpful here, because he recognizes that the “war on drugs” is not the main or only cause for terrorism, or radicalization.
Another “pattern” described by Roy is “a past of petty delinquency and drug dealing”, a shared “youth culture” and a sudden return or conversion to Islam, “immediately followed by political radicalization […] often linked with a personal crisis (jail for instance)” (ROY, 2015, p. 6-7). In this sense, getting back to descriptions of the “Paris Attacks” in mainstream international media, Abaaoud “became involved in petty crimes” (BBC, 2015c); Brahim and his Brother Salah “drank alcohol and smoked drugs”, and owned a bar that was shut down “because police believed customers were smoking marijuana there” (BBC, 2016); Salah was detained “for possession of cannabis”, and “spent time in prison for robbery, where he met suspected ringleader Abaaoud” (BBC, 2016; WASHINGTON POST, 2016); Mostefai was “a former petty criminal” and “got convicted eight times but spent no time in jail”, while Akrouh was given a “five-year jail sentence in absentia while he was” in Syria (BBC, 2016; WASHINGTON POST, 2016).
That is related to what Roy called a “youth movement”: radicalization takes place in small networks of friends – neighborhood, jail, internet, or sports clubs (ROY, 2015). There is often a sibling’s solidarity: many radicalize following a brother” (the Kouachi brothers in the Charlie Hebdo’s event, for instance, or Abdeslam in the “Paris Attacks”) (p. 7). Contrary to common sense, “very few of them had a previous story of militancy, either political (pro-Palestinian movements) or religious (local mosques, Tabligh, Muslim Brothers or even main stream Salafism)” (ROY, 2015, p. 7). “It is a relatively sudden individual jump into violence, often after trying something else (Merah tried to enlist into the French army)” (p. 7-8). As a consequence for political responses beyond security approaches, “monitoring of legal but militant groups, either political (Pro Palestine) or religious (Muslim Brothers) does not yield much information” (p. 8). Here, Roy helps us in constructing counter-hegemonic discursive strategies that denaturalizes the link between Islam and terrorism, or political violence more generally, although his alternative categorization of terrorists as “radicals” is not so distant from hegemonic, or dominant discourses. 24
The main motivation seems to be the fascination for a narrative that borrows schemes from videogames (Call of Duty; Assassins), using modern but also very contemporary techniques and aesthetics of violence, also found in non-Islamic platforms (“Columbine”; Mexican “Narcos”): “the small brotherhood of super-heroes who avenge the Muslim Ummah”, a global and abstract category (ROY, 2015, p. 10). The suicide-bomber and the “chevalier” are two important figures in this narrative, the first linked with what Roy calls “generational nihilism”, and the second with a “youth culture”, and, in both cases, what is at stake is “self-realization” as an answer to frustration (ROY, 2015).
And the reason for the expression of revolt in religious terms is twofold, and this is an important claim against commonsense and sensationalist media coverage of contemporary terrorism in Europe: most radicals have a Muslim background, which makes them open to re-islamization; second, jihad, which brings attached the Salafi version of Islam, simple to understand (do’s and don’ts), providing a “personal psychological structuring effect”, is the only cause on the global market: “If you kill in silence, it will be reported by the local newspaper; if you kill yelling “Allahuakbar”, you are sure to make the national headlines. In addition, the ultra-left or radical ecology is too “bourgeois” and intellectual for them” (ROY, 205, p. 11). So, almost none of them followed a ‘real’ process of religious education, i.e. converts; orphans (e.g. Kouachi); no practicing parents, yet, the religious myth plays an important emotional role (ROY, 2015).
One of the most important patterns seems to be “loose or no connection with Muslim communities in Europe” (p. 12), in part because it helps to deconstruct discourses that criminalize the Muslim community as a whole, as in “surprise stories” spread after terrorist events – e.g. “he was a quiet, nice boy […] he was just a petty delinquent, and he was not pious, drank alcohol, had girls etc., except that, recently his attitude has drastically changed” (p. 12). Another example would be BBC report on Mostefai, who “lived with his family in Chartres and frequented the Anoussra Mosque”, and showed “no sign of being an extremist”, according to a local Islamic leader (BBC, 2016). Therefore, it is certain that religiosity is important in their struggle, argued Roy, but “it is not an ideological rationalization of Islamic theology. ‘Religiosity’ not theology is the key” (2015, p. 12).
In sum, thus, “radicalization is a youth revolt against society, articulated on an Islamic religious narrative of jihad. It is not the uprising of a Muslim community victim of poverty and racism: only young people join, including converts who did not share the 25
“suffering” of Muslims in Europe” (ROY, 2015, p. 4). If there is one major sociological pattern circumscribing radicalization in Europe, it is young, religious low-profile individual trajectories (ROY, 2015). Although it seems obvious, this is a strong claim, because it hurts both the orientalist thinking that puts the blame on the Muslim communities of Europe and a sort of humanist reasoning that ends up criminalizing poverty, immigrants and/or refugees from Muslim countries.
Nevertheless, if, on the one hand it absolves the European Muslim community from common sense prejudices, on the other, it also absolves any communitarian trajectories, i.e. European Jewish-Christian (or otherwise), since Roy is privileging a narrative on individual trajectories, although he has considered the strategic agenda of radical organizations (Al Qaeda; ISIS) that “instrumentalize” these “rebels without a cause” (2015, p. 4). In other words, if one wants to understand contemporary ‘jihadist radicalization’ in Western Europe, one needs to take into account power structures at the core of the modern European political system, all the moral ideologies such as nationalism, racism, sexism, elitism, colonialism/imperialism, and all other isms.
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