France’s Ramadan Uprising - a Ticking Bomb for Europe (DEBKA Alert)

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 Europe’s Ramadan Intifada.

A single slogan made a mockery of president Jacques Chirac’s efforts of the last three years to distance France from President George W. Bush’s Iraq war. Furthermore, the French government’s 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 Sarkozy’s 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.

France’s 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 Qaeda’s 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 Qaeda’s 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 organization’s national French command.”

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.

" am personally leaning towards the idea that leftists are in 'league' with islamists..."

I'm happy to see someone who even goes that far. The view being "promoted" is that there is no connection.

In addition, I myself will concede that the Islamacist rank-and-file does not necessarily see a connection to the Left, and I'm sure there are many clerics who son't see it either. The individual memebers of the worldwide organized hard left (WOHL), for the most part, do not beleive the WOHL exists.

Here is a reposting of something I posted previously on Strategyh Page (probabably a year or so ago, long before the current troubles in France and I don't remember the reference to Chirac that prompted the post.) I have changed a few words to clean it up but will leave it otherwise as I posted it. It expresses some of views relevant to this discussion.

"'No. I do not think Chirac has a Muslim side. What I think is, this whole "Muslim" thing (as we are currently experiencing it) is, basically, a KGB operation, and Chirac is basically a tool of the KGB, like many people throughout the world.

No, I can't prove it, unfortunately. I wish I could. But the Soviets basically invented modern terrorism for the most part. Not the Algerian thing, I don't think, but the stuff after that.

The Romanians ran Arafat as their agent, this is a documented fact (Red Horizons,1987, Pacepa). Obviously, the Rumanains were acting under the control of the Soviets here: the Soviets had a Middle East interest, not Romania! Unfortunately, this link was apparently hidden from Pacepa (since he does not mention it). I know this seems strange, since he was the head of the Romanian KGB (he defected in 1978), but that is the only conclusion I can draw, unless he held it back from the book, which I do not believe. In the event (since Pacepa defected) this compartmentalization by the Soviets proved wise.

At any rate, Pacepa also details the Romanian connection to Khadaffi, further unlikely except as something under the control of the Soviets.

By the way, I refer specifically to the KGB here, no longer a formal organization. It has been replaced in Russia by the SVR (international, like CIA) and the FSB (national, like FBI) But I am talking about the guys who used to run the KGB, such as Putin, who now run Russia. I don't believe they entirely handed their international contacts over to the SVR, so the term KGB is still correct.

The KGB penetrated deeply into every important country in the world, both politically and in non-political spheres. Can I prove it? No, but I know it is true.

Consider this quote in a book by a GRU defector (Inside the Aquarium, 1986, Victor Suvorov)(GRU= Soviet military intelligence)

"Every exhibition attracts the GRU's interest, whether it be an exhibition of military electronics, of tanks, of cats or agricultural machinery or flowers. One of the most successful cases of recruitment by the GRU was carried out at an exhibition of Chinese goldfish. Who goes to these exhibitions? People with a lot of money who are connected with the world of finance, of big business and big politics. Exhibitions are attended by counts and marquises, ministers and their secretaries. All sorts of people go to exhibitions. Of course, you have to know how to select."

This written by someone part of an organization completely prohibited from gathering any form of intelligence outside of military intelligence. A restriction, needless to say, that in no way applied to the KGB, but was imposed on the GRU on the KGB’s behalf to prevent them from poaching.

Chirac is like many liberal leaders (though nominally “conservative” in French terms) part of the KGB web, in my opinion. What his connection would be I have no idea. It is probably "innocent" in the sense of Chirac not knowing it is KGB. (I am saying the KGB would probably be shielded in this case.)

Nonetheless, that is my contention. The KGB web, in my opinion, includes the Left and the Muslims, apparently unrelated groups who support each other at every turn.

Naturally, most participants know nothing of the KGB. That would be on purpose, wouldn't it? Journalists know what they learned in journalism school, which includes that it is OK to lie. (I was briefly in journalism courses 25 years ago and they were already teaching this idea then. I won't go into details, we can all see the result) Journalists believe the basic Leftist line and try to undermine the US military because they think its evil and promoted Arafat because they thought he was good.

But the KGB cooked up these ideas. They continue to set the line for Political Correctness in the world. Can I prove it? No. But it makes much more sense than what other conservatives believe, doesn't it? There has to be an intelligent hand behind the great, organized evils in the world, not diffuse stupidities.

Conservatives say the Left wants to destroy the US, Christianity, moral values, etc. OK, but why? Because they "hate" these things? Is this the motive of a rational person? It is the motive of a fool!

The architects of what is happening in Iraq right now are not fools, whatever you think of them. The architects of the worldwide Leftist & Muslim alliance are not malcontented depressives. They are evil men who make their living doing certain bad things. They are the KGB. The numerous malcontented depressives are “useful idiots”, useful to others who have energy and purpose---albeit bad purposes involving the creation of any amount of pain in suffering in others to facilitate their own wealthy and powerful lifestyles.

Finally consider this. The recent Chechnya terrorist operation in the school was KGB too. The suspected mastermind is someone the KGB has arrested in the past. The Spetsnaz failed to contain the kidnappers and they fled the scene. (We are told the kidnappers were "all killed" in the pursuit. Why "pursuit"? The Spetsnaz couldn't seal a perimeter? Oh, you don't think the KGB would do such a thing? The same organization (renamed) who starved 10 million Ukranians to death wouldn't kill hundreds of children to achieve their ends?

And their ends were achieved. The operation "proved" Putin cannot be behind terrorism, despite mounting evidence to that effect (such as his nuclear arming of Iran)."'

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