Posted on 11/07/2005 11:04:55 AM PST by strategofr
The violent riots spreading across France took several worrying directions Sunday night, Nov. 6, and Monday. The mostly Muslim gangs of youths began surging out of the immigrant suburbs to invade town centers; they fired their first gunshots at policemen; the number of torched cars peaked to 1,400; and disturbing new slogans were hurled, depicting Paris as Baghdad-on-the Seine and their campaign as the start of Europes Ramadan Intifada.
A single slogan made a mockery of president Jacques Chiracs efforts of the last three years to distance France from President George W. Bushs Iraq war. Furthermore, the French governments helplessness in quelling the trouble is encouraging other European communities to follow suit - in Denmark, Belgium, Spain and Sweden, for starters.
Chirac, after lying low for 10 days, finally called an emergency security meeting in Paris Sunday, Nov. 6. He then promised arrests, trials and punishment for those who sow violence or terror across France. But politics as usual held him back from instituting tough measures or naming those responsible for the violence, let alone deploying the necessary forces. French police are still under orders not to open fire unless fired on first. No names have been released of ringleaders despite several hundred arrests.
Saturday, Nov. 5, as the disorders went into their second week, the French prosecutor-general Yves Bot said he had detected an organized hand and a strategy behind the riots. Witnesses reported vehicles without number-plates distributing petrol bombs. A fuel bomb factory was in fact discovered Sunday in Paris with 150 bottles and gallons of gasoline ready to distribute to the bands of arsonists. Also found there were masks to hide rioters faces. In Clichy-sour-Bois, where the accidental electrocution of two teenagers in flight from the police ignited the first protests, residents said: This is just the beginning.
There are plenty of indications that the riots are not simply spontaneous outbursts of frustration by disadvantaged youths of North and black African descent, but centrally organized mayhem, an intifada activated by Muslim networking.
The Chirac-de Villepan government, trying to live down interior minister Nicolas Sarkozys provocative pledge to deal with what he called scum, is not acknowledging this. Because they refuse to recognize the rampage for what it is, they are withholding the forces required to restore order and so letting the danger get out of hand. Police, firemen and paramedics are no match for a fast developing civil war. The army will have to be brought in at some point, preferably sooner rather than later. For a start, marksmen need to be posted to pinpoint the ringleaders and the bottle-bomb wielders targeting cars, schools, shops, warehouses and public buildings.
Frances leaders, like the British and Dutch, are clinging to the hope that sympathetic dialogue with moderate Muslims will calm the street, despite all the evidence that radical, activist Muslims do not heed established Islamic authorities. On Nov. 6, the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, UOIF, issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims to seek divine grace by blindly attacking private and public property and urging meditation and calm.
The following night, bands of marauding Muslim youths extended their areas of attack from outlying city districts to urban centers and started shooting at police officers.
The controlling hand, far from being legitimate Muslim authority, is beginning to emerge as the very organization that has for several years been recruiting young fighters in French Muslim ghettos fight al Qaedas wars against the West in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and other sectors.
On February 20, 2004, DEBKA-Net-Weekly and DEBKAfile were first to reveal the extent of al Qaedas penetration of West Europe. They turned up French intelligence statistics which estimated that al Qaeda had recruited in France between 35,000 and 45,000 fighters and was organizing them in military-style units. They meet regularly for training in the use of weapons and explosives, combat tactics and indoctrination and are controlled from local and district command centers under the organizations national French command.
In Germany, Al Qaedas numbers are estimated at 25,000 to 30,000 men.
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Today, French counter-terror sources are willing to admit, albeit on the quiet and not for attribution, that those clandestine terrorist cells may well be at the bottom of the current riots. They note the history of the Palestinian uprising, which kicked off in 1987 with stones and petrol bombs, only to evolve into a suicidal terrorist war by the late nineties. They fear this process may be beginning - not just in France but in the rest of Europe too, that the covert nucleus of trained and indoctrinated Islamic terrorists al Qaeda buried inside Europe is being turned against the continent, starting in France.
LOL...
Frankly, I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. Maybe it will end the ROP crap from our leaders.
We need to face it sometime.
Acknowledge it. Meet it. Defeat it.
One good thing so far out of this is that Americans never again need to contemplate "why do they hate us". Now it's France's- (the top appeasers in the World)- question to answer.
Yeah, too funny!
Yes, we should bring our troops home immediately.
After what happened in NOLA waiting for those idiotic local "officials" to get their heads out of their sorry behinds? I don't think GW would be leaving it to local libs.
Maybe it's troupes...like in the follies?
I meant we should let Europe handle it's own problems.
The French Insurgents are insurging.
From other things I have read, the option to send in the French military is not that strong on the table.
(1). The French regulars are about 24% muslim.
(2). The French authorities are of the mind that sending the military will up the ante, (yes, this is appeasment thinking).
(3) The French government fears world opinion should they resort to sending the military in at this time.
Understood. My response was purposeful overstatement, meant to say: How'd those who villified the U.S. about Iraq like it if we just pulled out, sat back and watched them handle a jihad against THEM on their own?
France will have to do some serious apologizing, internationally, in writing, before I'm willing to send one soldier to help their froggy rears. They'll have to come totally clean about their activities in Iraq before the war, too. As would Germany.
Who swaps their wife with who..
In Detroit there already are enthic tensions between the black and arab population. If it blows up there it blows up huge.
Dont worry..the boats will sink.
what will be discussed ??
probably the selection of color of white for the surrender flag...
its a serious problem for french officials.. I'm thinking a beige or off-white color would offend the muslims.. and a pure white would offend louis farrakhan.
I work in a U.S. site for a French company. Severtal of my colleagues have commented that these riots really are young people. He said that last night, when the rioters started up things in their small town, the parents came out and litterally beat the snot out of the kids for what they were doing. That ended the riots in that area real fast. The general mood over there by the average French is that heads need to be busted. No real action has been taken against the rioters for fear of being called racist. The fear in political circles is that if the police do anything big, then the Muslims will scream racism and it will inflame the situation. Hence, nothing is being done.
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