Jihad in France from Charlie Hebdo to Nov 13

Jihad in France from Charlie Hebdo to November 13

Dr. Alain Gabon, Virginia Wesleyan College Model UN, Saturday February 13, 2016

(Numbers in parentheses refer to slides and companion clips. Additional sources available on request.)

(1-3) At 130 people killed and over 200 injured, the Friday Nov 13 series of 6 swift and coordinated attacks in the heart of Paris is the worst act of terrorism on French soil since the end of WW2. (The 2nd worst killed 28, took place in 1961 during the Algerian War, and was accomplished not by Muslims but by the OAS, the terrorist organization fighting against Algerian independence. Charlie Hebdo, at 17 victims, comes 3rd. (5) In one single day, the team of ISIS-related militants and suicide bombers (4, clip 1) killed more people than the total number of French victims of Islamist terrorism from the previous 14 years combined (5), which was exactly 102 for the period between 2001 and March 2015 including the French victims of 9-11.

Differences between Nov. 13 and previous attacks

Nov 13 differs significantly from the previous Al-Qaeda or Daesh-inspired Jihadi attacks, essentially (6) Charlie Hebdo and before that, the 2012 murder of Jewish children and French Arab soldiers by 23-year old French national of Algerian descent Mohammed Merah (7, clip 2), who killed 7 people before being shot dead in a police raid, and the May 2014 killing of 4 people at the Jewish Museum of Brussels (8,9) by Mehdi Nemmouche, another young French national of Algerian origin, who declared he wanted to emulate his hero Mohammed Merah (a typical “copycat” attack). (10) Nov 13 marks a triple departure from the previous acts of terrorist violence by Mohammed Merah, Mehdi Nemmouche and the Kouachis Brothers: 1) this operation was a lot more deadly than the previous three combined 2) it was better organized and showed a level of sophistication, coordination, and technical expertise (use of explosive belts, 3 coordinated teams, etc.) absent from the previous ones, which by comparison look amateurish (e.g. the Kouachi Brothers from Charlie Hebdo left their photo ID in the back of their car and initially showed up at the wrong address, forcing them to ask a security guard where exactly the offices of Charlie Hebdo were located, etc.). But despite the much greater effectiveness and complexity of the Nov. 13 operation, we should not exaggerate the level of sophistication and professionalism of these terrorists either, since for example none of the suicide bombers succeeded in killing people (e.g. those who were supposed to explode in the middle of the French stadium actually arrived too late there, all the gates were closed, so they just blew themselves up outside the stadium, killing no one except themselves—not exactly the sign of deadly effectiveness and sophistication but more like the messy work of semi-amateurs…) 3) Third, and this is probably the most significant difference from the previous attacks: unlike Mohammed Merah, Mehdi Nemmouche and the Kouachi Brothers, the Nov. 13 teams did not select specific people or demographic groups (Jews, cartoonists poking fun at the Prophet or French-Muslim soldiers whom they see as traitors because they participate in the Afghan occupation or fight other Jihadists in Mali). Instead, this time, they committed an indiscriminate massacre, killing whomever they could regardless of race, religion, or attitude vis-à-vis Islam. In that respect, Nov. 13 is definitely quite different from Charlie Hebdo and resembles more closely the post 9-11 Al Qaeda attacks in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005, or more recently, in a French context, the failed attempt at a mass massacre in the Thalis train last summer (11), which was prevented by 3 courageous American soldiers on

2 vacation, who later received the Legion of Honor, the highest official distinction, from President Hollande.

November 13 was of course not an isolated event (12) but part of a series of Al Qaeda and ISIS-inspired killings in several countries, including the destruction of the Russian plane that killed 224 in Egypt, the lone gunmen Bardo Museum and beach resort attacks in Tunisia last April and July (13, clips 3), the October suicide bombing against a Peace rally in Istanbul, Turkey, and the double suicide bombing in a shopping district in Lebanon, in an area controlled by Hezbollah (because the organization is fighting ISIS in Syria on the side of Assad). The Paris attack was only the French component of a larger international offensive that, altogether, killed about 1,100 people, all targeted countries included, since January 2015.

Symbolic targets (14)

As is often the case in such operations, the targeted locations were carefully selected for their symbolic meaning, for what they represent not just for the terrorists themselves but for the targeted societies and the world at large. Thus, in 9-11, Al Qaeda went after the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the main 2 symbols of America’s global power, the concrete incarnation of its economic domination on the one hand (the World Trade Center) and its military hegemony on the other (the Pentagon). On November 13, the ISIS militants selected the 10th and 11th arrondissements of Paris, namely an area of the capital full of leisure activities, music, cafes, restaurants, theatres, concert halls, shops, an area that is both very young and very mixed culturally, full of different communities (15), an area which more than other neighborhoods, represents the free, open, tolerant lifestyle of Paris, its Voltairian, mostly atheist, urbane, cosmopolitan, leisurely and hedonistic youth lifestyle that is the exact opposite of the strict, rigorist, puritanical Salafi lifestyle promoted by the Islamic State and enforced on the populations under its control. In values and way of life, that particular area of Paris, very much like the Quartier Latin, is thus the exact antithesis, the inverted mirror image of the Islamic State. Symbolically, it represents everything they hate or claim to hate and everything they are not and don’t want to be.

4 explicit motivations (IS Press Release)

The ISIS press release claiming responsibility for Nov. 13 provides 4 explicit motivations for this latest attack and the selection of Paris rather than another EU capital like Barcelona, Berlin or London: 1) first motivation put forward, as suggested above, a self- righteous cultural and religious resentment against a country and a city that ISIS sees as a particularly impious and decadent place of “abomination, perversion, and depravity”, to use their own words. Paris, as the “capital of depravity”, becomes a target of choice, a privileged “House of Jihad”, as opposed to the famous Dar al-Islam (“Abobe of Islam” or House of Islam) in the crudely manichean, “Us vs Them”, ISIS theology. We can have doubt about their sincerity here, since most of the ISIS men do not live a particularly pious, holy and ascetic lifestyle. In addition to killing countless defenseless Muslims (which all mainstream strands of Islam regard as the gravest possible un-Islamic crime, a crime against Islam itself), they also rape an awful lot, which, one will agree, is not a particularly pious, religious and ascetic activity, even though they also justify that on theological grounds. Cherif Kouachi, one of the 2 Charlie Hebdo attackers, never was particularly devout even during his born- again reincarnation as a Jihadist. Paris-Match magazine quotes him as telling investigators when questioned about earlier offences: “I am what is considered a ‘ghetto Muslim’. That means I live my life as I wish. I go and see my girlfriend and then go to repent. I don’t see

3 myself as a good Muslim. I smoke and all that with my friends.” Similarly, several hostages who were released against ransoms have testified that the ISIS men who guarded them seemed to have little religion in them, they never saw them praying, they never discussed religion or the Kuran with them, but they seemed far more interested in things like soccer, breaking banks, and girls (Clip 4). This whole rhetoric about “rejecting depravity, perversity, sinful pleasure and decadence” might therefore just be PR for other potential recruits, religious sugarcoating to legitimize violence. 2) (16) The second motivation provided in the press release links the Nov. 13 attack to the previous one against Charlie Hebdo in January, since ISIS claims that France is now smelling the smell of death, quote, “for having insulted our Prophet”—an obvious reference to the caricatures of Charlie Hebdo. 3) Three, they also claim this attack will serve as a deterrent, a “warning” for other nations who may be tempted to join the Obama coalition, thus sending a message to other EU countries like Germany, Spain, or Italy who so far have mostly been content with sitting on the side. That goal, at least if it is to be taken at face value, utterly failed since both France, Germany and the UK immediately stepped up their military engagement. 4) The 4rth explicit reason is in my mind the most serious and substantial one, the one that should really give everybody, France in particular, pause for thought. It is also a double-sided motivation, with on the one hand, a domestic, national and more cultural dimension, and on the other hand, an international- geopolitical aspect. ISIS declares that Nov. 13 is actually not an act of aggression but a retaliation, a punishment, and a vengeance against France since that country “has flaunted their fight against Islam in France, and beaten our Muslim brothers in Caliphate land with their planes.” The domestic, national &cultural dimension of that “fight against Islam in France” refers to the poor treatment of French Muslims (17), especially the intense, relentless, exacerbated islamophobia against them. Here, sadly, one has to recognize that indeed, France, especially its intellectual and political elites, its governments left or right but also too often the rest of the population have set the standards in the islamophobic and islamo-paranoia departments. Besides the continuing attacks on Islamic outfits especially hijabs, new anti-Muslim and anti-Islam campaigns are constantly being launched (18), usually by the elites and elected officials of the Republic with the massive support of the media and public opinion, always under the alibi of “the defense of laïcité”. The latest campaigns advocate banning all of the following (non exhaustive list, just the main campaigns under way): a) ritual slaughters of animals (which would therefore ban halal meat altogether and make it impossible for a devout Muslim to eat meat in France) b) minarets and large mosques (too visible, too scary). One remembers minarets got banned in Switzerland, a country that counted…exactly 3 when the ban won the referendum a few years ago. Even three minarets were thus too many for the population. c) several major Islamic theological schools deemed too “radical”, such as Salafism (Prime Minister Manuel Valls in particular, one of the most islamophobic statesmen in Europe, is clearly trying to close down all of the 90 or so French Salafist mosques and three have already been closed under the current state of emergency) d) Muslim organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and all the mosques, associations and organizations allegedly “inspired by the Muslim Brothers” or by the Salafists, such as the UOIF (the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, the largest federation of French Muslims and yet another one of the many Muslim bêtes noires of Prime Minister Valls) e) Islamic outfits in universities f) alternative, pork-free menus in school lunches for Muslim children (several cities have actually already banned those), so, even Muslim children are now being taken hostage, so to speak, by those elected officials who by banning one Islamic practice, custom and tradition after another, clearly seek to make life in France impossible for Muslims.

Let us hope this sad state of affairs will change and those European officials start realizing what they are doing: generating anger, frustration, resentment and alienation that in turn fuel the anti-French, anti-EU, anti-Western Jihad and plays in the hands of groups like ISIS. As for the ISIS claim that Nov. 13 represents a retaliation and a vengeance against France because it has, quote, “beaten our Muslim brothers in Caliphate land with their planes” (=the international-foreign policy dimension as opposed to the domestic cultural one), this refers of course to President François Hollande’s decision to join the Obama coalition (19) and bomb the Islamic State as early as September 2014, namely a year ½ ago, long before Charlie Hebdo and Nov. 13, unlike the other EU countries who mostly opted not to participate directly in the bombing campaign and just offered logistical or other types of support.

In my opinion but also in the opinion of many analysts such as Columbia University Professor and UN Special Advisor Jeffrey Sachs or former French Foreign Affair Minister Dominique de Villepin, Hollande’s move to bomb ISIS was a completely reckless, gratuitous and unjustified decision. An unprovoked act of war actually, since at that time, ISIS represented no threat to France, had not committed any attacks against France at home or abroad, and clearly did not have any specific axe to grind against that country, before Hollande started to bomb them, that is. For example (20-21), the 4 French journalists who were captured near Raqqa in June 2013 (with many other foreign nationals for the ransom money), were all released unharmed and in good health 10 months later, in April 2014, in sharp contrast with the fate of other prisoners (22) or foreign hostages like US journalist James Folley, who usually got executed. But had these 4 Frenchmen (23) been captured after September of that same year, after Hollande joined the military campaign against the Islamic State, there is no doubt their families would never have seen them alive again. Hollande’s policy has been an exercise in how to recklessly make your compatriots and country even more unsafe while claiming you are protecting them.

That crucial eye-for-an-eye, blow-for-blow sentence from the ISIS press release echoes word-for-word the January 2015 statement made by Amedy Coulibaly (24, clip 5), the Charlie Hebdo attacker of the Kosher Supermarket, who himself justified his own murders as a retaliation for France’s participation in the war against the Islamic State.

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Coulibaly and others such as French Jihadist Kevin or the American Moner Mohammad Abusalha (25, clip 5 for Moner). Obviously nothing could possibly justify, ever, deliberate massacres of defenseless innocents. But there is also no doubt that Hollande’s crucial Sept. 2014 decision (26) and his hawkish, “more-Bush-than-Bush” militarist adventurism have powerfully contributed to putting France into harm’s way. To sum up the main consequence of Hollande’s decision to join the Obama coalition and attack the Islamic State: France was no prime target for ISIS before this decision, but after, it was. Very much like Georges W Bush’s 2003 decision to invade Iraq at a time when it represented no threat whatsoever to the US and there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq, no suicide bombing or IEDs, no specifically anti-Western sentiments, and no anti-American terrorism (but after the invasion of course there was all of that, we made it happen ourselves), similarly, Hollande’s decision, furthermore taken overnight without any public or parliamentary debate in a most undemocratic manner, represents a textbook case study in how to create your own Frankenstein monsters. Or at a minimum, how to dramatically increase overnight a low-level or even non-existent threat against your own nation.

That fatal day of Sept. 19, 2014 when Hollande decided to join Obama and bomb Isis, Hollande made it a certainty, no longer a possibility or a hypothesis but a certainty, that major terrorist strikes by ISIS will from now on be conducted on French soil. It was no longer a matter of if, but of when and how. The first and most concrete consequence of Hollande’s (in my mind) criminally irresponsible war-of-choice has been to instantly propel his own country and people at the very top of the ISIS hit list, even ahead of the US now. Tragically, November 13 brought that evidence. Some may reply that sooner or later, ISIS would have attacked France anyway—an odd counter-argument since it amounts to saying they hate us anyway so it doesn’t matter if we give them one more good reason to attack us. To this, one could in turn respond: first, we will never know that now, since it is too late, and second, even if that may have been the case, why make it even more certain they will attack us??? Such policies and arguments make no sense, it is like putting a gun in the hand of someone you know is dangerous, arguing it makes no difference because he’s going to come get you sooner or later anyway. Those are self-defeating, even suicidal policies.

As we have seen in the past 3 months since Nov. 13, France and ISIS are now locked in a sort of fatal and deadly embrace, a hellish cycle of violence, retaliations, counter- retaliations, tit for tat, blow for blow, bombing campaigns, terrorist strikes to punish those, more bombing to punish the former and so on and so forth, with no end in sight, each party justifying their use of force and civilian kill as self-defense or vengeance against the other party’s use of violence. Both sides have entered a phase of escalation, claiming it is a necessary response to the other side’s escalation of violence. This does not look good at all.

Neo-con’ turn in French foreign policy

To contextualize all this further, Hollande’s decision was part of a more general and truly surprising neo-conservative turn in French foreign policy, inaugurated under former conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, then radicalized further by the Francois Hollande/Manuel Valls dynamic duo. That hawkish turn in French foreign policy, which has really taken aback the international scene observers, is itself part of an even larger cultural reordering of all of French culture (27). In its more specifically foreign policy dimension, this turn to the neo-con’ right includes a slew of anti-Jihadist military interventions in Africa (Mali, the Central Republic etc.); the bombing campaign in Iraq, which Hollande further extended to Syria several weeks before the Nov. 13 attack (28); a tough stance against Russia on the Ukrainian front; an intransigence on the Iranian nuclear deal and lifting-of- sanctions dossier that was even harsher than the US position, to the point many were afraid that France was going to derail the negotiation process with Iran; an almost complete realignment on Israel of the so far pro-Palestinian French policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and so on and so forth.

Given that extreme foreign policy switch to the right, even more surprising from a Socialist government, it is no surprise that France is now increasingly perceived throughout the Mideast but also among many French people like Coulibaly as the new neo-con’ imperialist foreign power, as an agent of Israel itself, and as the supreme enemy of Islam for at least 3 reasons: 1) as previously explained, the intense domestic islamophobia and harassment of its Muslim citizens at home, which so often feels to them like borderline persecution 2) its military engagement against Islamist insurgent movements in Africa and the Mideast 3) (29-33) France’s long, very long and deep history of conflicts, imperial conquests and colonial intrusion, with all the racism, prejudice, condescending paternalism and violence against Muslims that inevitably come with such history and has characterized France’s relation with the Islamic world, from the medieval Crusades to the colonization era

6 and the Algerian war (which only ended in 1962 so this is not ancient history we are talking about here). The ISIS terrorists are therefore very much France’s ghosts from their national colonial past (the return of the repressed, if you’re a Freudian). A violent past which, through this French but anti-France Jihad, is now coming back home to haunt that nation in a displaced, belated, unexpected, and infinitely savage form, as is always the case with the Freudian repressed when it returns. That French Jihad is thus also the catastrophic response to that whole nightmarish history which goes back centuries, and it is no coincidence if it is literally the Arab and African sons and daughters of those who were colonized who are for the most part committing those terrible acts. In a French context, we must also understand events like Charlie Hebdo and Nov. 13 as the continuation, or maybe the resumption, of colonial wars. (The fact France is using the same state of emergency law of 1955 that was initially passed and implemented during the Algerian war is another striking, and oh-so- Freudian “lapsus” and repetition.) Nov. 13 is fully part of that historical boomerang effect, in addition to representing the unintended yet predictable consequence of that neo-con’ turn in foreign policy, what Jeffrey Sachs calls “blowback terrorism”, and which Amedy Coulibaly expressed in his video. Nov. 13 is thus also a repeat of the tragic mistake of the 2003 Iraq invasion, on a much smaller scale.

Compared to the newly hawkish Hollande aka Bush III and his “tough-on-terror” policy, bellicose rhetoric and behavior, it is now ironically the American President, Barak Obama, who looks like the moderating force (this is the world upside down when we remember France’s decisive opposition to the 2003 Iraq war.) The 2 countries have switched roles. The 2011 equally misguided precedent of Libya, where the previous French President Nicolas Sarkozy dragged Obama into the NATO bombing campaign of the Gaddafi regime also comes to mind, with, again, just like in Iraq 03, the disastrous consequences we have seen for Libya and the whole region.

The Al Qaeda or ISIS young men like Kevin (25) or this Nov. 13 attacker (34) have therefore plenty of objective reasons to select and target France as top priority ahead of even the US now or other EU nations like Spain, Germany, or Italy, who have opted for a more cautious policy. There’s nothing surprising about Nov 13. This was the inevitable response and blowback act of terror anyone who had been paying attention was expecting after September 14. In such a context, what would truly be surprising would be the absence of “Jihadi” attacks.

Other motives

But behind those 4 explicit motivations given by ISIS and Coulibaly, which it would be a grave mistake to dismiss as mere alibis or PR , one can also discern other motives and calculations on the part of the Islamic State (35). Beyond their immediate and clearly stated goals (punishment, vengeance, retaliation, etc.), terrorist attacks like November 13 seek for example to galvanize their affiliates and inspire potential sympathizers worldwide to conduct similar operations. The recent San Bernardino massacre of 14 by an American couple claiming to be inspired by ISIS though no organic links or direct connections seem to exist, is probably a good example of such “copycat” acts of terror Daesh is calling and hoping for. San Bernardino is a pure example of that new ‘horizontal’ (Gilles Kepel), ‘democratized’, or ‘volunteer terrorism’ by which anyone can become a terrorist and join the action, without needing any training, skills or smarts, just a gun, a knife or a car to use as murder weapons. This type of horizontal, ‘egalitarian’ Jihad is increasingly replacing the far more hierarchical, pyramidal, and elitist model of Al Qaeda which required a lot more logistics, preparations, skills, money not to mention the trust of the leaders.

ISIS also tries to fracture the societies it targets by making the coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims impossible. One of their main hopes, and it is very important to understand that, is that their attacks, just like 9-11, are acts of provocation, meant to invite both Western military interventions in the mideast and domestic islamophobia at home in the form of scapegoating and general retaliations against Muslims from the governments and populations (e.g. crackdowns on mosques, banning Salafism as France is trying to do now and so on)—a scapegoating which ISIS then skillfully exploits in its propaganda as further evidence that indeed, the infidel West is the enemy of Islam and all Muslims (That’s the “See? We told you so!” strategy. “We told you they hate you, they hate your religion, don’t want you there, you’ll never be accepted, you’ll never fit in, so come join us.”) Such anti- Islam and Muslim-bashing always serves the Jihadists’ goals. If the terrorist attack inflames anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments in Europe and the US, if our governments and compatriots react the way the Islamic State wants them to react, by blaming and going after Muslims in an indiscriminate, unfair and excessive manner, it will also serve their divide- and-conquer chaos strategy. Such overreactions, both international and domestic, inevitably help the likes of Al Qaeda and ISIS accomplish their ultimate objectives. Those counterproductive policies and reactions on the part of Western societies and governments widen the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims, exacerbate the antagonism against Islam, make it easier for Jihadist groups to recruit, and further separate, alienate, disaffiliate Western Muslims from their own societies, thus pushing them in the arms of the Jihadists.

The more suspicion, resentment, fear, hate, collective stigmatization, exclusion and demonization of Islam and Muslims, the better off ISIS will be. This is a mathematical axiom ISIS understands very well, though many clearly don’t. So, when ISIS hears someone like Trump, or learns about cases like the German city of Bornheim banning all adult male refugees from public pools after reports of sexual assaults by “immigrants” while in Cardiff, the U.K. has forced asylum seekers to wear red wristbands at all times, the strategists of the Islamic State must be celebrating and the (halal) champagne must be flowing in their underground facilities! Those types of reactions, policies, and collective punishments against all Muslims for the acts of a few are exactly what they want. And sadly, too often we take the bait.

ISIS two ultimate goals (?)

Many analysts thus perceive a more insidious, perverse and dangerous strategy behind those attacks, which are both an end in themselves (the punishment, the retaliation) and a means to larger ends: as acts of provocations, terrorist attacks like Nov. 13 constitute a trap which seeks to lure our governments and people into islamophobic responses (clip CNN 7), militarist overreactions, and ground invasions which inevitably come with military occupations of Muslim land and people. This in turn will help ISIS accomplish what may be their 2 supreme, ultimate goals: 1) drag their enemies into their own mideastern turf so they get stranded there in a quagmire that will exhaust them and make them bleed blood and money to the tune of trillions, thus hurting those nations far more than the likes of ISIS could ever do through the attacks themselves (=the 9-11/Iraq invasion and occupation scenario.) Let’s call this: “Awaking the sleeping giant, drag him out of his home and make him come to yours so you can bruise him even harder and prove that giant was a colossus with clay feet”. Incidentally, this strategy has been confirmed by former French hostage and journalist Nicolas Henin (23, the man with the 2 girls + clip 8), one of the voices of reasons out there, who during his 10 months in captivity had ample opportunities to get to know the men of ISIS and who is now begging the West not to strike the Islamic State, explaining that is

8 exactly what they want. Such strategy is also quite explicitly theorized in their own Jihadism manuals, as this maxim shows (36) 2) Second goal: ISIS wants to push our nations to escalate their military assaults in order to provoke not just a war with France or the US, but a general East vs. West conflagration that would pit Western nations against the entire Muslim world, dragging the West, sucking the West into Islamic land for the last final ‘battle of Armageddon’ as a prelude to the ultimate triumph of Islam, thus fulfilling ISIS’ eschatological, apocalyptic, and millenarist theological vision. Assuming ISIS takes its apocalyptic ideology seriously—that’s a big if and I’m not sure they all take their own theology seriously—but assuming they do, this may explain what some have described as an irrational, incoherent and absurd strategy consisting in attacking like madmen just about everything that lives, every nation on earth, France, the US, Russia, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc., thus guaranteeing their own extinction in a quasi-suicidal way. But if they (at least some of them, the top ideologues and theologians) are serious about their ‘Armageddon’ prophecy, then, such apparently suicidal acts of generalized aggression make perfect sense, since for that mystical goal to be accomplished, ISIS needs to provoke everyone into a military escalation and into actually going there, fight them on their land, where that mythical last battle, ‘Judgement Day’, is supposed to take place. ISIS’s Bible or management manual, the anonymously-written Management of Savagery, confirms this interpretation of events like Nov. 13 (36), and I would suggest we remember Iraq and don’t take the bait.

Nov. 13: a sign of weakness or of strength? Whether that apocalyptic goal is genuine or just propaganda is up for debate. But this sudden wave of deadly attacks in several countries shows the Islamic State has entered phase 2 of its existence, that of the internationalization of the struggle and the projection of its power abroad, well outside the borders of its own Caliphate (37). It is not clear whether this new development is a sign of strength or on the contrary of weakness. That too is up for debate, though of course ISIS presents those strikes abroad as victories and a great show of force. But their status and meaning is not that clear. On the one hand, the internationalization and broadening of the scope of Daesh’ operations may be the logical extension of phase 1—the initial phase of territorialization through the creation and consolidation of a “Caliphate” between Iraq and Syria. One can certainly argue that attacks like Nov. 13 reveal their growing confidence, strength, logistical ability and readiness to attack foreign nations, not to mention having so many recruits and a steady flow of them that they can afford to waste a few dozens and even hundreds in suicide bombings. Now, the other hypothesis (the one I personally favor, with others like Gilles Kepel), is that those attacks speak not of growing strength but on the contrary of desperation and fragility, paradoxical as that may sound. But consider this: at least for the moment, ISIS is effectively contained at home, in their Syrac territory, incapable of enlarging their Caliphate further, basically cornered and encircled by a coalition of enemy forces, governments, states and sub- state groups from the Iran-and-US- backed Iraqi government in the east, the Kurds up north, and the Assad regime plus the anti-ISIS Syrian rebels westward. They are actually losing land fast, about 20% or more in one year according to the recent reports, and the Islamic State is also showing signs of internal difficulty, if not collapse. For example half of the bread ovens in Raqqa, their main city and capital could not function in December for lack of fuel; they have greatly lowered both the salaries of their fighters and the number of new recruits because they can’t manage to pay them; smuggling routes have been blocked or are being bombed whenever a convoy tries leave the IS to go sell their oil beyond their territory; and according to the latest UN report, their income sources from agriculture (the 2nd biggest after

9 oil) are decreasing too “due to poor seed quality” while signs of internal opposition and resistance to their bloody rule have started to appear. You may not want to bet on them. Geostrategically, the Islamic State has already reached a dead end, as is clear from the maps. All that while being pummeled hard from the air by the Obama and now the Russian coalition, which seem to have been more effective than one initially thought in not just containing but diminishing them, including hurting their economic resources (the oil refineries and so on). Furthermore, the Islamic State’s situation shows it is totally surrounded and encircled not just once but twice: first domestically in Syria-Iraq, by an inner ring of enemy forces east, north, west and south, as said above, but also internationally (38), by a second outer ring of enemy states including Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. They therefore have no way out and no exit strategy either. Having cornered themselves like rats, ISIS is now in an unsustainable situation, though they can probably resist the destruction of their “Caliphate” for a while. The Islamic State, most of whose territory is desert land anyway, doesn’t have a single state ally and certainly not among Muslim-majority nations like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Tunisia, who are fighting them like everybody else. There is also not a chance they will ever be able to topple and replace any government, not even the weak and fragile neighbors like Damascus or Baghdad, much less Western states. One must be very impressionable or severely brainwashed by the round-the-clock, wall-to- wall 24/7 hysterical hype around ISIS and Jihadism to believe that 50,000 guys, half one football stadium, are going to invade and conquer France, the UK, the US and the whole EU then replace Western civilization as we know it by their extended Caliphate. This is pure paranoid psychosis, though many people in Europe, subjected to a massive hype around “Jihadism”, terrorism and “Islamic radicalization”, seem to believe this is a real possibility. A sense of perspective and a cooler, more rational assessment are badly needed. ISIS can kill, of course, once in a while; they can establish beachheads in the Middle East and possibly beyond then try hang on to them as long as possible; they can inspire already existing Jihadist groups to rebrand themselves as ‘ISIS’ because for the moment they have a momentum and are seen as ‘the real thing”; they can incite and encourage into action lone wolf terrorists like the San Bernardino couple to attack soft targets, because it is so easy to do; they can find some angry, depressed, disaffiliated and alienated lost souls like Amedy Coulibaly to kill people here and there for them. That is bad enough but that is about all the Islamic State can do and as far as it will go, even if their numbers may grow a bit more for a year or 2. In such a context, if we want to be optimistic, one can compare attacks like Nov. 13 to a mortally wounded, hunted, dying and cornered beast that’s lashing out, as opposed to a strong and vigorous animal in full growth. Incapable of gaining ground and now actually losing grip on its territory, Daesh is reduced to killing foreigners abroad and falling back on easy soft targets (people at a café terrace, etc.), so they can continue to be seen as winners, as victorious and defiant, while they are actually in a context of objective defeat, both military, political, and religious (since so few Muslims identify with them). Paradoxical and possibly naive as it sounds, operations like Nov. 13 may signal not so much a second phase of vigorous international expansion in the life of the Islamic State (the projection of their power abroad), but instead, the beginning of the end, les sursauts d’une bête blessée qui se sait condamnée, the lashing out of a wounded beast who knows it is ultimately doomed. In that respect, famed French scholar of Islam and the mideast Gilles Kepel has made the comparison between Communism and what we call “Islamism”, political Islam, which for him is in a historical situation of failure and historical decay, not victory or momentum contrary to what our media and politicians are claiming. Arguing that the rise of Jihadism is a sign of decline, not expansion, of Islamism, Kepel reminds us that it was in the 1970s, after

Communism had lost any possible appeal to most people—after the revelations about Stalin’s brutality, Soljenitsin’s Gulag Archipelago, after the invasion of Hungary, as the Soviet economic model was decaying, etc.—it was after all that that communist radicals turned to terrorism, just like Jihadists today. Following the ideological demise of Communism, those militants became members of the Red Brigades, the Stern Gang, Action Directe, The Red Army Fraction and more, leaving a long trail of blood and dead bodies in their path, before going extinct and vanishing. [See the powerful Olivier Assayas 3-hr biopic “Carlos” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3QkM7uyF10, about Carlos the Jackal, the “rock star” of terrorism in those days, now rotting in a French jail.] Having given up on winning the battle of the hearts and minds , those leftist-internationalist-anarchist-anti-capitalist etc. militants were still hoping that violence would intimidate people into fearing them and governments into changing their policies. But it did not work, and none of those groups exist today. That too is part of the good news: terrorists groups, ideologies and trends never last too long. Who even remembers Action Directe or Carlos today? Like a virus, they appear in an organism that looks healthy (France), do quite a bit a damage, run their course, then disappear. The bad news is: they are always replaced by something else (hence Al Qaeda morphed into the even worse Islamic State, which itself will morph into something else even if we eliminate the Caliphate entirely, unless we address the fundamental root causes of terrorism and drain the swamps that breed the mosquitoes instead of just killing the mosquitoes one at a time without draining the swamps, which no one seems to do. For Gilles Kepel, that is where radical political Islam is today, and this new Jihad hitting France and other countries is a sign of that demise, of their complete inability to seduce large chunks of the Muslim populations anywhere and even less topple governments, do regime state, instore sharia in the West, and replace the EU or even all of Western civilization with some “Caliphate”. Who can possibly believe those 50,000 men could by themselves end “Western civilization as we know it”??? As Kepel suggests, their terrorist violence is a sign of desperation, not strength. But again, a dying beast can be even more aggressive and dangerous than a healthy one, and it can take a long time for that animal to die before it stops biting. So, be ready for more attacks though they will most likely be rare, small scale, and kill far fewer than Nov. 13. Just like 9-11 turned out to be a unique event that was never replicated afterwards anywhere in the Western world, we should hope that Nov. 13 and this terrible, bloody 2015 year will also remain the exception that confirms the rule, not the new norm.

However, we should not be optimistic here. Why is that?

France’s terrorism-prone terrain First, the recent attacks and the seriously elevated threat on French soil are caused by a combination of structural factors, some domestic, national, cultural and specific to France, others international and geopolitical, not specific to France. Those factors, essentially 4, have slowly converged over the years then finally coalesced to produce the exact type of cultural terrain most favorable to acts of terror like those of Charlie Hebdo and Nov. 13. That is why we should not be too optimistic. So, what are those 4 factors whose convergence has created such a terrorism-friendly terrain? 1) The first one is the presence on French soil of a large number of alienated, often angry, often depressed young Muslim men of mostly Arabic/African descent who feel miserable, desperate, lost, purposeless, in limbo, without a future, and utterly disaffiliated from their country of citizenship—in our case they no longer feel French, and maybe they

11 never did. (Amedy Coulibaly in the video talks about the Syrac Caliphate as his real home, not France, not Europe—those lost young men and less frequently women are in radical rupture with their countries of citizenship.) This type of post-teen socio-psychological profile, with its obvious lack of successful individuation, structuration and sense of belonging (to a nation, a country, a people) makes them highly volatile and extremely vulnerable to the Islamic State’s appeal, discourse, and propaganda. 2) Eminently related to that first factor, the general situation of Muslims in France and Arab Muslims in particular who are subject to a double—racial anti-Arab, and religious-Islamophobic—form of prejudice and rejection, a very deep and extensive one. (See our remarks on this in previous sections) Though the overwhelming majority of French Muslims are well integrated (most of them were born and raised there anyway), happy to be French, and perfectly comfortable in the Republic, they nonetheless suffer, especially those young men far more than the older ones or the women, from a relentless and permanent harassment of a cultural, racial, and religious type, from systematic discrimination (access to housing, jobs etc.), and from ceaseless attacks, usually from State elites like PM Manuel Valls, against their freedom of religion and other basic rights. This islamophobia from the top-down, this aggressive paranoia of the elite, their obsession with Islam, their witch hunt against perfectly harmless hijabi or niqabi women and now Muslim schoolkids, are the expressions of that much older and longer history of conflicts and confrontation between France and Islam I was evoking earlier, in particular the colonial era and the Algerian syndrome. Those are the more national, specifically French, domestic cultural, political and historical factors. 3) Now, combine 1 and 2 above with recent foreign international geopolitical developments, namely the double Syrian/Iraqi civil wars following the 2003 invasion by the US and Assad’s atrocious repression of his opposition during the 2011-2013 Arab Spring (39), the collapse of both the Iraqi and the Syrian states (now failed states), and the subsequent emergence of the Islamic State’s “Caliphate” on the ruins of those 2 decomposing corpses. By redeeming, so to speak, the collapse of the other two nations, Iraq and Syria—one state being created and consolidated while 2 are falling apart—and by reactivating the old theme, dream and Islamic utopian fantasy of the Caliphate, the creation of the Islamic State has totally energized, galvanized, excited and inflamed the global Jihadist imagination like nothing else before including Al Qaeda. (The IS is now by far the main magnet and catalyst for Jihadism worldwide.)

Above all, the Islamic State is offering to many of those disenfranchised and disaffiliated young men-in-limbo what they could never find in their home countries, France, Britain, Belgium or the US: a sense of purpose, dignity, and transcendence, a cause célèbre and rallying battle cry allowing them to posture as revolutionary rebels at war against the whole world (the whole romanticism of counter-cultural revolutions, of me-against-the- whole-corrupt-world); the possibility to redeem their first failed life by becoming a born- again Jihadist; a new sense of virility (very important for such young males in crisis) acquired through violence and control of women (the Scarface fantasy, the macho swagger we see in their always carefully staged and choreographed execution videos and photos 40- 41), not to mention the opportunity to take their revenge against what they have experienced as a racist and Islamophobic France (or Belgium, for Abaaoud 40-41).

Now, that would already be a lot to offer. But add to this the following: status, prestige (in the Islamic State of course), a sense of power and empowerment they have probably never experienced in their life, a brand new State, a new home (their beloved and fetishized “Caliphate”), a new country where finally, they can feel they have a stake, a place.

And that’s still not all. Add to this: a) lucrative opportunities for personal enrichment (the IS is the wealthiest terrorist organization ever, plus now, it is indeed at least a proto-state, a sort of country where you can emigrate and start a brand, though possibly short, new life) b) the chance to have a family, a wife, or 4 or 5 wives plus as many sexual slaves as they want (again, nothing individuals like that poor Mohammed Merah could possibly have in France!) c) the possibility to act out their most violent male instincts including killing and raping, and best of all do so in complete impunity, since in the IS, all of this is not just legally sanctioned but encouraged, celebrated, and glorified by the Caliphate’s theologians, who render for them all those behaviors and crimes not just permissible but Islamic, “halal”.

From where those young men are, this all looks like a pretty good deal and a once-in- a-lifetime opportunity to finally get it all: the fame, the money, the glory, the big guns, the women, the flamboyance, and the adventure. In France, those sorry losers and retarded post- teens would clearly have no chance to get any of that. But in the IS they can have it all, their cake and eat it too. They can kill, rape, loot and plunder and still be glorious flamboyant brave Islamic fighters for Allah. So the question is not why-but-oh-why? are so many young men attracted to the IS, but why wouldn’t they, in the absence of perspectives in their home countries? In France, they were just losers, broke deadbeats and depressed loners. But in the Caliphate, they can be Rambo, Scarface, and a revolutionary fighter for Allah all at once. What’s not to like?

And to top it all, the ultimate icing on the cake, or la cerise sur le gateau: their place and name guaranteed in world history. From their perspective, even if they die young, as most of them do, at least they will have lived fast and become world famous, as opposed to a depressing life of anonymity with as their only future, lackluster or menial temporary jobs (Coulibaly had a part time job in the local Coca Cola factory in his banlieue, his housing project) or long-term unemployment, with a steady cocktail of discrimination, racism, loneliness, sexual frustration, lack of female companionship, and permanent humiliation with no end in sight. In that perspective, even a violent but to them meaningful and glorious death with panache for the Caliphate is still more desirable than a meaningless life in Europe. And Europe should really do some serious soul-searching about that too.

Our nations too have some serious soul-searching to do about why and how they have created this monster called ISIS and its foreign fighters or at least how they have greatly contributed to its emergence. But it is a job they are mostly not doing, preferring instead the lame, easy, and self-complacent “Civilization against Barbarism” posturing that is now triumphing everywhere, along with equally empty and vacuous shows of nationalism—and I salute Our Brave Troops, and I rally behind my President, and I wave my little flag and I sing the National Anthem, feeling brave and patriotic. That may feel good, that may be part of normal human reactions after a tragedy, but that is certainly not how you understand, much less defeat, terrorism.

4) The fourth and last factor that explains this sudden surge of Jihadism in France is the one that has provided the spark. Namely, Hollande’s September 2014 decision to first join the anti-ISIS Obama coalition, aggravated by his second decision, several weeks before the Nov. 13 attack, to expand the French military strikes to Syria. Furthermore, as I explained, this happened in a context where France was already heavily engaged militarily in five former African colonies--Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad—fighting Islamist insurgencies, often on the side of authoritarian African leaders and brutal military

13 who themselves commit war crimes against those Islamist insurgents and the rest of the population suspected of helping them.

ISIS’ French militants were completely infuriated and enraged by Hollande’s 2 consecutive decisions to bomb their Islamic State in Iraq then expand the strikes to Syria. The way they saw it, this was a purely gratuitous aggression against their newly-born country: finally, they have their own dream Caliphate, their own state, no matter how ugly and repugnant it looks to the rest of us, and the first thing France does, is try destroy it. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back and provided them with one final evidence that France had indeed become a supreme, possibly THE supreme, enemy of Islam, both at home and abroad.

Conclusion: Why Jihad in France?

What has happened here is a sudden, perfect alignment of the stars. Or to use a less poetic but more relevant metaphor, the assemblage of the various components of an explosive belt (the 4 structural factors I have mentioned above, domestic and international). If kept separated, isolated from one another, these various components or ingredients remain relatively harmless. But when you bring and assemble them together—and they have fully converged, coalesced and crystalized in France now much more than anywhere else—then the explosion becomes inevitable.

Since none of those factors, none of the components of the explosive belt—to recapitulate and add a couple more: 1) the long and deep French history of islamophobia and anti-Arab racism 2) the social and psychological fragilities and internal fractures and fissures (with their own nation and compatriots, with the political authorities, etc.) of many lost young Muslim men in France—frustrations, fragilities and fractures the IS recruiters know how to skillfully exploit by turning the knife in the wounds 3) the arrogance and xenophobia of so much of France’s political class and very sadly of large segments of the population as well 4) the civil war in Syria- Iraq and Assad’s ongoing repression 5) even more generally, the lack of mideastern states and western societies where people like Coulibaly or Abaoud can feel they have a stake, a part to play, a place 6) the hawkish neo- con’ turn in French foreign policy and its militarist approach to the problem of Jihad. Since none of those factors are likely to disappear in the years to come, one should not expect a significant improvement of the suddenly elevated threat level against France anytime soon.

Thank you very much.

Addendum: the ISIS and terrorism threat in general is vastly exaggerated (and how the real threat to our democracies is not terrorism but ourselves and our governments)

(Sources available on request)

We should not exaggerate the ISIS menace and more generally the Jihadist threat, as everybody (media, politicians, lots of academics too), have been doing for years, in my mind to counterproductive, even harmful consequences. On the one hand, even when we add the victims of Charlie Hebdo and Nov. 13 to the tally, terrorism in general and even more so Jihadist terrorism, which is only one type, remains one of the least causes of deaths in our societies, France and the US included (42).

When it comes to killing, terrorism greatly pales in comparison with any other threat one can think of, from illnesses to violent deaths including car accidents, domestic accidents, domestic violence, homicides, and shooting sprees. Just one example: in the last 15 years, 9- 11 included, Jihadism has killed an annual average of 7 French persons, 15 if we now add Nov. 13. But during the same period, an average of 732 French children (including babies) died every year from domestic abuse, without eliciting a single of those dramatic and hysterical speeches we get from our government and media at each terrorist attack (even those who actually fail like the Thalis train or are thwarted by the police), much less substantial action plans and special policies to the tunes of millions of euros to protect those far more numerous and equally innocent victims of violence. This proportion and hierarchy of threats, with terrorism at the very bottom of the list, remain the same in every single country of the Western world from North America all the way to Russia. Regarding ISIS, most estimates show they have about 50,000 militants. That is barely one third of one single football stadium like the State de France. Who could possibly think such a tiny group of people can conquer the Middle East, topple governments, even weak and brittle ones like Syria and Iraq, much less our own, or put an end to “Western civilization as we know it”, except media and politicians who have many vested interests in inflating the threat and keeping us scared with that kind of absurd hype? Furthermore, ISIS has already been stopped in its territorial expansion as explained above (37-38). Their geostrategic situation shows they are totally surrounded and encircled not just once but twice: first domestically in Syria-Iraq by an inner ring of enemy states and sub-states (Iran-backed Shiite militias, etc.) east, west, north, and south, but also internationally, by a second outer ring of enemy states including Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon. The truth is that the Islamic State is already boxed in, cornered, encircled and surrounded twice by states and forces far more substantial and powerful than they are. That is why they’re lashing out in terrorist attacks abroad now: because that is pretty much the only thing they can still do at this point. Moreover, they have absolutely no state allies, not a single one, even among Muslim- majority and Islamic states. Their ideology, methods and cruelty are repugnant to basically all Muslims worldwide, and even Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, themselves no angels of mercy, have vigorously condemned them! The best ISIS can do now seems to call for Muslims abroad to kill, but even with this dramatically lowered ambition, precious few are interested. At best they can find some affiliate fringe groups abroad, establish a few beachheads in failed states like Libya, and strike once in a while here and there. Finally, regarding their finances, their annual revenues amount to 500 million dollars or so. That’s one tenth of the budget of Harvard University. And those revenues are shrinking fast, now that the IS is cornered, that their convoys of oil trucks are bombed to smithereens each time they try leave their territory, and that the already poor Sunni populations they control have been exhausted through relentless taxation and racketeering. There is only so much you can extract from the same limited people, 8 million, less than one city like LA, Cairo or Paris. Despite the media and political hype that constantly inflates the strength of Daesh and gives them the publicity they need for their propaganda (our media, driven by blood, violence, drama and sensationalism are always such great objective allies of terrorists, who know they can rely on them for amplification), ISIS represents no existential threat to any state, government, or society. Not even the neighboring weak Baghdad government since neither Iran nor the US will ever let Baghdad fall to ISIS. Who could possibly think that? No matter how many attacks it can inspire, organize and conduct on French or US soil or anywhere else, the Islamic State is in no position to topple our democracies or radically

15 change our ways of life and values, unless we do that ourselves in the name of the “war on terror”. And that is actually where the real threat to our democracy and way of life resides. Again, the United States were hurt infinitely more by Bush’s decade-long and disastrous war- of-choice in Iraq than by 9-11 itself. It was Bush’s war, not 9-11, that caused the death of more Americans, cost the nation trillions, and laminated the US on the world stage. And when one observes how quickly France has for the moment abolished its own democracy for a State of Emergency that essentially extinguishes so many fundamental civil liberties such as the right to privacy, checks and balances, judicial oversight of the administrative, executive and police authorities (searches and arrests without warrants are now permitted without restrictions or control by a judge and have become common), or even their so far sacred right to demonstrate (all demonstrations of any type have been banned), when one observes such alarming developments, one knows that the real, substantial threat to democracy is not terrorism but our own governments and populations, if we let a few terrorists push us into the type of police states Georges Orwell described so well in his chilling novel 1984 and that Henri Giroux (here http://www.truth- out.org/opinion/item/22958-neoliberalism-and-the-machinery-of-disposability and here http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23265507.2014.966750 ) or Chris Hedges call States of Terror: “Another jihadi terrorist attack in the United States will extinguish what remains of our anemic and largely dysfunctional democracy. Fear will be even more fervently stoked and manipulated by the state. The remnants of our civil liberties will be abolished. Groups that defy the corporate state—Black Lives Matter, climate change activists and anti-capitalists—will be ruthlessly targeted for elimination as the nation is swept into the Manichean world of us-and-them, traitors versus patriots. Culture will be reduced to sentimental doggerel and patriotic kitsch. Violence will be sanctified, in Hollywood and the media, as a purifying agent. Any criticism of the crusade or those leading it will be heresy. The police and the military will be deified. Nationalism, which at its core is about self-exaltation and racism, will distort our perception of reality. We will gather like frightened children around the flag. We will sing the national anthem in unison. We will kneel before the state and the organs of internal security. We will beg our masters to save us. We will be paralyzed by the psychosis of permanent war.” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/states_of_terror_20151122

Observing how both the US and France, two of the world’s oldest, strongest and most consolidated democracies, have reacted to (respectively) 9-11 and Charlie Hebdo/Nov. 13 with the exact same mix of blind bellicose and mindless militarism, conformist nationalism, and passive, sheepish obedience to the Powers that Be, one can see how a mere handful of successful terrorist attacks in 15 years have already pushed us to severely eroding our own democratic institutions, damaging our civil liberties, and abdicating our way of life. By doing so, we are not opposing or fighting terrorism, but instead we are ourselves continuing terrorism’s job of trying to end our regimes of liberties. Soon, we won’t even need the likes of ISIS to kill our freedom and end “Western-civilization-as-we-know-it”: one or two more attacks, and we will be doing that job ourselves by surrendering our freedom to those new Orwellian police and military states in the making around us.