FALLUJA OR WATTS?

The riots in France are generating a great deal of navel-gazing, here and in Europe.

Max Boot sees the problem in terms of the sclerotic French economy.

It is precisely because of France's high level of "social protection" that it is now experiencing its own version of urban hell. The welfare state that is the pride and joy of postwar France has become a ball-and-chain hobbling its ability to keep up economically with the despised Anglo-Saxons. In the United States, the government spends 35.9% of gross domestic product; in France, it's 54.5%. Generous unemployment benefits, free housing and healthcare and other goodies make life cushy even for those without a job. Yet this generosity has not bought social peace. The prisons in France are filled with young men of African and Arab descent who decided to supplement their subsidies with the proceeds from muggings, break-ins and drug deals. The crime rate in France is soaring even as it is declining to a 40-year low across the Atlantic. No welfare check, no matter how large, will satisfy young men who desperately need the sense of self-worth that comes from holding a steady job and providing for their family. But in France there simply isn't any work to get, especially not if you're young and foreign. In addition to heavy tax burdens, employers are hobbled by countless regulations that discourage job creation. The overall French unemployment rate is 10%; among young first- and second-generation immigrants it's three or four times as high. By contrast, in the cold, capitalist United States, the unemployment rate is a mere 5%. And while the U.S. economy is roaring ahead at 3.8% this year, the French economy limps along at 1.4% growth.

The New York Times explores the insular nature of the Arab and North African ghettos in the suburbs of major French cities.

Amin Kouidri, 20, has been hunting for a job for more than two years now and spends his days drifting around a government housing project here under the watchful gaze of France's national police. He and his neighbors in one of France's now-notorious housing projects say that they feel cut off from French society, a result of a process of segregation lasting for decades, and that alienation and pressure from the police have now exploded in rage across the country. "There's nothing to do, and frustrations have added up until in the end it has become like a bomb that they carry inside," said Azzouz Camen, 44, at a small snack bar he owns between the neighborhood's apartment blocks and a gleaming new mosque. For these men, the violence that has swept the country is easy to understand, even, they say, long overdue, not only because of the unemployment but because of the increasing confrontation with the police.

Antoine Audouard, who is writing a book about French identity, sees a nation that can no longer enforce its own rules.

A friend called me a night ago from Paris. Paris? Not quite. My friend is of Indian origin and comes from a rundown "cite" in a suburb called Choisy-le-Roi, a housing project plopped down in an 18th-century royal park. The park retains a Louis XV elegance and grace. But as you walk by the project's windows, my friend says, on a good day only a trash bag will land on your head; on a bad day, it could be a washing machine. On Friday, as his mother was having a bite in a restaurant at the local mall, a gang of 20 or so angry youths from the neighborhood stormed into the restaurant, terrorizing customers, poaching food and drinks and ransacking the place. His mother, who is severely disabled and survives on a modest state pension, was frightened. And my friend was frightened for her, but angry as well. In Paris last week, I was struck more than ever by the frustration and anger in the air. There is a joke about France being a nation divided in two: those who complain and those who complain about those who complain. But the joke is no longer funny: as Frenchmen, we grow up with the idea that our national unity is built upon diversity, and that our chronic division against ourselves is, on rare occasions, redeemed by brief periods of national unity.

His friend says the Army should be called upon to enter the fray. I've heard that in a number of television reports when average people are interviewed.

David Ignatius says France hasn't had its day of reckoning, as we had here in the U.S. in the 60s, regarding race.

I lived for several years in France, returning to America a year ago, and I was always astonished by the French inability to reckon with racial divisions. You just didn't see black or brown faces in prominent positions -- not in the National Assembly, not on French television, not among business leaders, not in the media. French analysts have been warning for decades about the dangers of warehousing African and Arab immigrants in the suburbs, but the French have refused to adopt aggressive affirmative-action programs that might change the situation. The country was so worried about Muslim extremists that it ignored the more immediate problem of the soulless, sullen suburbs.

Jim Hoagland says there are numerous factors at work.

The social explosions that have hit France are being watched nervously by the rest of Europe for signs that this could become something that so far it is not: a religiously motivated uprising by Muslim youths against their Christian and Jewish neighbors. But jihad -- or the assumed lack of it -- is not the whole story either. The French -- and the angry, nihilistic Arab and African youths in their midst -- are also "victims" of that country's immigration and assimilation policies and, indirectly, its paternalistic social welfare system. Mark them as casualties of a particular brand of politically correct arrogance that French politicians have practiced for 30 years, and you begin to get something like a whole story. France's upheaval is too important to be explained away by any single factor. And it is too important to be treated as a matter of satisfaction by Americans irritated by the French, on foreign policy or other grounds. France and its beautiful, troubled capital are proxies for all affluent nations that have elevated into an art form the habit of ignoring the world's poor, desperate and criminally inclined.

Ann Applebaum is taking some satisfaction from the French getting their comeuppance.

"Katrina's devastation points the finger at Bush's system . . . Issues forgotten for years are back to the fore: poverty, the state's absence, latent racism."
-- Le Monde, Sept. 8,

The quotation above appeared in a front-page article in France's newspaper of record. Just below was a cartoon showing the American president watching TV footage of black corpses floating in the water. "But, what country is this?" the caption had him saying to his generals: "Is it far away? We absolutely have to do something!" Unfortunately, this column does not come with its own cartoon attached, so I'm forced to describe the one I think Le Monde should print this week: A drawing of the French president, Jacques Chirac, watching black neighborhoods go up in smoke. The president is asking his generals, "But, what country is this? Is it far away? We absolutely have to do something!"

But the real question remains, are the riots simply a replay of the Watts riots in the 60s here in the U.S.? Is it really a matter of a community cut off from the economic and political mainstream lashing out with violence as a way of expressing decades of frustration? Or is it Falluja sur Seine?

Various media reports have described the coordination of activities and evasive tactics via cell phones, web pages, and instant messaging. French police have discovered at least one bomb-making facility in the riot zone near Paris and suspect that more exist elsewhere. Despite this rather sophisticated infrastructure of support for the riots and the warnings just prior to the outbreak of the riots they themselves published, the Washington Post's editorial page--and most of the rest of the media--seems stuck on the notion that poverty and a lack of opportunity alone must account for this sudden and growing uprising. France--like much of the media--stood foursquare against Bush's interventionist policy in Iraq. So if Islamists have targeted France as their next front in an attempt to establish "no-go" territories in the center of Europe, it might call into question much of the anti-Bush narrative. Instead of Muslim anger being caused by America's policies of intervention, Islamofascism might really be a worldwide movement against Western interests. Amir Taheri noted in the New York Post that the French have already heard from people who claim that they can negotiate an end to the violence. Local "emirs" representing the sink estates want the French police to withdraw from the territories and allow sheikhs from the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization with ties to al Qaeda, to arbitrate an end to the riots. "All we demand is to be left alone," says Mouloud Dahmani, an "emir" who promises a return to quiet in exchange for autonomy. It is, in effect, a land-for-peace proposal aimed at the heart of France and Christendom. Will the French surrender to the Islamist demands for sharia in the shadow of the City of Lights? Will they abandon their own territory and allow the establishment of enclaves in which French police dare not tread? Or will they, the media, and the world finally wake to the threat of Islamist expansionism after years of denial?

Tony Blankley points a finger at the Islamists. He even wrote a book predicting some of what is happening now.

As the Muslim populations and their level of cultural and religious assertiveness expand, European geography will be "reclaimed" for Islam. Europe will become pockmarked with increasing numbers of little Fallujahs that will be effectively impenetrable by anything much short of a U.S. Marine division. "Thus, as the fundamentalism expands into European (and perhaps to a lesser extent American) Muslim communities, not only will Islamic cultural aggression against a seemingly passive and apologetic indigenous population increase, but the zone of safety and support for the actual terrorists will expand as well." (The West's Last Chance, pp. 55-56). Now, two weeks into the appalling explosion of violence in Europe (and the equally appalling French governmental passivity in the face of such violence) most of the world's media treats this huge event as the third or fourth story on the evening news. From the BBC and CNN to the major newspapers of the world, the story is underreported and misreported. On Monday The Washington Post was still not reporting the story on the front page. The big networks have consistently given only headline coverage to the story. I was in Russia last week (lecturing and doing media on my book) and actually timed the BBC coverage of the French Muslim violence story at about a minute and a half, while in the same broadcast the post-Pakistani earthquake-relief story was given over fifteen minutes. CNN International proportioned its coverage similarly. Soon, the violence of the last two weeks will be seen as the opening of an event of world-historic significance.

Souhelia Al-Jadda completely disagrees.

For politicians who point to the riots as a sign of increasing Islamic radicalism and the start of a so-called clash of civilizations between the Muslim East and the Christian West, all evidence points to the opposite. In a rare show of unity, the Islamic community is working in tandem with the French authorities, which requested that local Muslim imams help restore peace. The imams appealed for calm but to no avail. This week, the Union of French Islamic Organizations stepped up efforts by issuing a fatwa, or religious decree, condemning the riots. The fact is that most youth do not identify with Islam or religious leaders in this situation because their discontent is not about religion. It's about justice.

So, there you have it. Falluja or Watts? Is it about economic and social justice, or the blossoming of a religious/cultural war? The answer to this question couldn't be more important. If this is really a replay of the Watts riots, then the answer is clear. A nationwide campaign to batter down racial prejudice among ordinary French men and women. A systematic effort to integrate Arab/North African French people into the mainstream, probably through affirmative action programs. The end tosegregatedd slums, the creation of job opportunities. In essence, a great series of social and economic reforms (many of which, unfortunately, would be completely unpalatable to the majority of White Frenchmen).

If, however, this is Falluja, then we're talking about a problem that cannot be solved with social or economic reforms in any one country. While those reforms are still, in my view, necessary on their own merits, they will not address the Islamist agenda. For that there can only be two answers, victory or submission.