Posts
Timesonline has a story on how the French are stunned that the Muslim youths are trashing their home suburbs and using shotguns and other deadly force against gendarmes sent to quell the rioting.
You'd think after the turmoil in Algeria & elsewhere in the French colonies, there wouldn't be surprise.
I'm just hoping Sarkozy does the job he started as Interior Minister---he would seem to have a mandate.
2 comments :
Dave, what do you mean by this? "You'd think after the turmoil in Algeria & elsewhere in the French colonies, there wouldn't be surprise."
Of course, I inadvertently left out "former" French colonies. While the Amoco entry-strategy chief for North Africa, I went to Algeria in the early '90s when about 80% of the youth were "hittistes," i.e., unemployed kids with their backs to walls while lounging on street-corners. The FIS Islamists recruited these youths to pursue violent acts against the govt; out in the countryside, the brutality of the FIS against Berbers in particular was/is unspeakable. I visited Algiers for a week & talked with the French & US ambassadors, saw [then Oil Minister] Boutiflika & other Algierian notables [Judith Miller had preceded me by a couple of days in trying to get the scoop.] Long story short, violence, not suasion by other means, was the primary and almost only tool of Islamic political repression. I consider what is happening in the Paris suburbs a bit of an extension---of the hittiste mentality in Algiers. Morocco & Tunisia have less of a streak of violence among their French emigre population, but the anger & resentment of the Algerians goes back to the '54-62 War. I dated the gorgeous daughter of the French charge in Saudi---her daddy was a former Col who had invented the "telephone" for interrogating captured rebels back then.
The French consider the Algerians living in France who are not assimilated as dangerous---at least the man on the street does.
HOpe that sheds a little light.
Post a Comment