French
struggle with homegrown terror
False
starts and ideological discomfort thwart attempts to combat foreign
fighters.
By NICHOLAS VINOCUR
3/31/16, 5:35 AM CET Updated 3/31/16, 9:53 AM CET
PARIS — A week
after a French minister accused Belgium of being “naïve” about
jihadism in the wake of the Brussels terrorist attacks, France
entered its own anguished debate about the prevalence of violent
ideology in tough immigrant neighborhoods and the best ways to
address it.
The trigger was a
remark by Youth and Sports Minister Patrick Kanner, who said that
some “100 neighborhoods” in France shared the noxious traits of
Brussels’ Molenbeek, the breeding ground for terrorism in the
Belgian capital.
Kanner’s fellow
Socialists blasted him over the comment. Jean-Christophe Cambadelis,
who heads the ruling party, accused him of stigmatizing Muslims.
While France had “pockets,” “buildings” or “streets” that
resemble Molenbeek, he added, there were no neighborhoods like it in
France.
This tit-for-tat in
the ruling party is part of a wider political fallout from a spate of
attacks. Hundreds of European-born Muslims have left to join Islamist
extremist forces in Syria and Iraq; more volunteers for ISIL came
from France than any other EU country. Many of these new European
recruits are coming home and some are carrying out deadly terrorist
strikes: Paris on November 13, Brussels last week.
The debate this past
week also speaks to the underlying anxiety – both political and
real – about a long-standing and dangerous shortcoming in French
policy: Despite a robust security apparatus and a state of emergency
in place since November, the country lacks a workable approach to
dealing with violent Islamist indoctrination and recruitment.
While Germany,
Sweden and Denmark boast well-respected “disengagement” programs
to detect and dissuade would-be terrorists that draw on their
experience with far-right groups, France is still experimenting and
struggling to find solutions. People who work to prevent jihadist
recruitment say France, like Belgium, will remain vulnerable as long
as it doesn’t do better.
The
best-known program, which stopped operating last year, used therapy
and family engagement to break recruiters’ holds over their
targets.
Programs launch then
fold months later, without explanation. Some of the country’s
toughest, most Molenbeek-like areas lack any program at all. And in
prisons, where hundreds of hardened jihadis are now serving time
after returning from stints with ISIL in Syria and Iraq, little
thought is given to social reinsertion programs that might offer
former fighters hope of starting a new life once they have completed
their sentences. Experts fear France will end up with a new cadre of
super-jihadists with nothing to lose when they leave jail.
“In terms of
deradicalization, we are at absolute zero,” Rachida Dati, a
center-right MEP who authored a report on radicalization adopted by
the European Parliament last year, told the JDD weekly paper Sunday.
“It shocks me when I hear [Prime Minister] Manuel Valls say, ‘We’re
going to launch deradicalization centers, we’ve launched a
deradicalization center.’ They don’t exist!”
France started to
address radicalization in 2013, when departures to Syria were
peaking. It launched a “#Stopjihadism” web campaign to fight
online recruitment, as well as a toll-free hotline where parents,
teachers, employers or friends could report suspicious behavior, such
as sudden changes in clothing or eating habits, to authorities.
Hotline operators,
who have received more than 8,000 tips so far, suggest a course of
action to authorities, depending on the nature of the issue:
“Dangerous” individuals might get signalled to intelligence
agencies and monitored or pursued for criminal charges, when
applicable; less risky profiles will be referred to a local
prevention program approved by the interior ministry. These are
highly varied and unequal, and there is no single preferred method.
The best-known program, which stopped operating last year, used
therapy and family engagement to break recruiters’ hold over their
targets, most of whom are in their teens or twenties.
Only one permanent
prevention center currently operates in France, and it’s strictly
voluntary for participants, who usually join on request from family
members.
‘Sevranistan’
France’s
deradicalization predicament can be seen in miniature in the Paris
suburb of Sevran, a 40-minute train ride from the Luxembourg gardens.
It’s a smaller,
somewhat less blighted version of Molenbeek, with unemployment above
20 percent, high crime and a foreign-born or “immigrant”
population estimated at about half of the total 50,000 inhabitants.
Another shared trait: Sevran has produced at least 10 volunteers for
ISIL in Syria and Iraq, seven of whom have since been confirmed
killed.
Had it not been for
the parents of Felix Roy, a convert to Islam killed in 2015, Sevran
might have remained unremarkable among many similar towns.
They turned it into
a symbol. Furious at what they called an “omerta” concerning
radicalization that saw elected officials refusing to acknowledge a
spreading problem, Thierry and Veronique Roy penned an open letter in
early March to the mayor of Sevran, Greens party member Stephane
Gatignon, accusing him of having failed to act against a local
recruiter for ISIL or a makeshift mosque believed to be a jihadist
boiler room.
Not only had
Gatignon stood by as Salafist groups flourished in his town, the Roys
alleged in their letter; he indirectly abetted the ISIL recruiter by
allowing him to be employed on a municipal contract at a local
school. “Your status as the town’s top official should have
forced you to lodge a complaint … against these radical extremist
groups that want to bring us down,” the letter read.
In a public
response, Gatignon rejected all the accusations. Sevran’s town
hall, he argued, had been “committed to fighting radicalization”
for years thanks to the help of local associations — in this case,
Muslim community outreach groups funded mainly via municipal
subsidies.
He said the
authorities didn’t turn a blind eye and engaged with the parents of
foreign fighters. Gatignon met the Roys after their son left to
Syria. The mayor added that the ISIL recruiter in question, who was
jailed in 2015, was only employed by the town for a month during the
summer.
Two employees at
Sevran’s town hall declined to identify any programs or
associations that carry out prevention or deradicalization work in
the town. One said that “none [came] to mind.”
While Europe’s
Radicalization Awareness Network — a European umbrella group that
studies and establishes best practices for prevention and
deradicalization work — lists a group named “Tarjama” as doing
prevention and detection in Sevran, both town hall reps said they
were unfamiliar with the name, which also was not listed in the town
directory.
On March 26,
Gatignon lashed out in an editorial published in Le Monde against
what he called a “scandalous smearing” of his town. Sevran had
become a “scapegoat” for a problem that existed across France.
“Sevran is not an autonomous republic!” the letter read.
The Roys vowed to
file a criminal complaint against Gatignon for “failing to assist a
person in danger.”
Cash-for-jihadis
For Ouisa Kies, a
sociologist who runs a prison deradicalization program, Sevran is
typical of many Molenbeek-like neighborhoods in France.
If the mayor has
outsourced detection work to religious associations, as is often the
case in towns like Sevran, he or she may not be aware of what is
happening in his or her town, and is reassured by promises that
things are “under control.”
Meanwhile, Kies
said, a climate of intense suspicion of authority means that very few
people will ever report suspicious behavior to a local authority
figure or a government-sponsored anti-radicalization hotline. To do
so would amount to “snitching,” or giving someone up to the cops.
In such
neighborhoods, the few people who do use the government’s hotline,
she said, never get referred to local prevention specialists, as the
system is supposed to do.
“The hotline
doesn’t work in places like this [Sevran],” she said. “It’s
for the middle classes — people who feel comfortable dealing with
the authorities.”
Two years ago, the
interior ministry attempted to counteract the “don’t snitch”
effect in poor areas by setting up an experimental prevention center
in Aulnay-sous-Bois, another tough Paris suburb, run by a prominent
female local activist. Interviews were granted; journalists were
invited to inspect the spare, unmarked apartment in a housing project
where Sonya Imloul and a team of religious aides held therapy
sessions for suspected radicals, often with their parents.
After a year of
operation, the center shut down. French media reported that the state
cut its funds due to suspicion of embezzlement; Imloul said she
feared for her safety and asked to stop.
Last year, another
high-profile prevention program, run by anthropologist Dounia Bouzar,
came to a similarly abrupt end.
Bouzar said she quit
in protest over President François Hollande’s plan to strip
convicted terrorists of their French nationality. But other sources
in the field hinted at different reasons.
Bouzar had recently
come under fire in the case of a 17-year-old girl who had undergone
her “deradicalization” treatment. After the girl attended therapy
sessions with Bouzar and her family over the course of several
months, the teen attempted to travel to Syria and was caught at the
last minute thanks to phone taps of her conversations with a
recruiter in France.
“There is a
business of deradicalization,” added Kies, the sociologist. “When
the government says it’s going to spend, all sorts of people line
up to take the money. Some of them are good and competent, some are
just on the take.”
France’s
predicament can be seen in miniature in the Paris suburb of Sevran.
When it comes to
prevention, France is still searching for the right formula. Despite
a wealth of examples from neighboring states, from Britain’s
community-based approach to the German, group-therapy method, Paris
has no clear preference.
Much of its
ambivalence, critics say, has to do with the fact that, unlike in
Germany, security services are deeply reluctant to cede any part of
their duties to civil society actors, which means less funding for
prevention groups. Another factor is France’s secular tradition,
which makes the state uncomfortable with confiding sensitive work to
religious authorities.
After several false
starts, France inaugurated its first permanent prevention center late
last year. The CAPRI center in Bordeaux, western France, employs a
four-person team including a psychologist, a Muslim chaplain and a
social worker, and takes after the Danish “Aarhus” model — a
deradicalization program focused on family engagement named after a
Danish town that sent several volunteer fighters to Syria. CAPRI,
which stands for Center for Action and Prevention Against the
Radicalization of Individuals, stands out for being the first
permanent prevention program officially recognized by the French
state.
CAPRI, like most
prevention programs, operates on a strictly voluntary basis.
Participants attend therapy or religious counseling sessions, often
with members of their family, either on location or elsewhere,
according to an ad hoc schedule. The cases treated are typically
young people, converts to Islam in almost half of cases, who have
shown a sudden change in behavior, cut themselves off from friends or
been caught consuming jihadist propaganda online. CAPRI does not
handle “deeply radicalized” individuals, who are usually referred
to the criminal justice system.
“The state does
not really have any religion as to what sort of deradicalization
scheme they support,” said CAPRI spokesman Marek Fetouh. “We work
with family members to try to break the mental hold these groups have
on young people…. Our advantage is that we are linked to the town
hall.”
Give them jobs
For the toughest
cases — hardened jihadis who fought in Syria or Iraq, or deeply
indoctrinated career criminals — France has no dedicated program.
In March, the
government announced it would soon open its first non-voluntary
“deradicalization center” near the city of Tours, southwest of
Paris, that promises to deprogram radicals, instead of merely
deviating them from the path of radicalization. Ten similar centers
are due to open around the country over the next two years.
However, here again,
the centers target not the toughest cases but people aged between 18
and 30 who have “not yet crossed the line into violence,” Pierre
N’Gahane, a government official in charge of the program, announced
on France Bleu radio.
For those who have,
and they count for hundreds today, there is only prison where they
are likely to mix with other radical inmates. France unblocked €80
million last year on a prison deradicalization program geared at such
cases, but the funds are heavily weighted toward surveillance via the
hiring of guards and intelligence agents. Of that amount, €1.23
million is allotted to hiring psychologists, social workers and
Muslim chaplains who are to be in charge of the actual
deradicalization work. When it comes to social reinsertion, or
programs to help inmates rebuild their lives post-release, France has
very few — and one of Europe’s highest rates of crime recidivism
to prove it.
In any case, for
Kies and Richard Rechtman, a psychologist whose work focuses on
genocide and therapy for the authors of atrocities, the benefits of
attempting to deradicalize the toughest cases are small to nil.
“The idea that
these militarized, deeply indoctrinated people will simply give up
their ideal because we show them it’s wrong, in return for becoming
unemployed once they leave jail — that seems to me to be very
naive,” said Rechtman.
Instead, he argued,
the state should focus on helping jihadists who have served their
time rebuild their lives post-release. Given the difficulty of
finding a job in France, that effort should involve direct subsidies
for housing and living. “The alternative is to have these people go
back to their old neighborhoods with no job, no prospects and a
completely collapsed sense of self,” he said. “Why wouldn’t
they go back to the old life?”
According to a 2010
report by the RAND Corporation, deradicalization programs in the
Muslim world, notably in Saudi Arabia, that put more emphasis on
social reintegration have among the best track records in the world.
Politically
speaking, France shows little tolerance for non-punitive measures
where jihadists are concerned. Prime Minister Valls himself hinted at
such a mindset when he said, after the November 13 attacks in France,
that “to explain [jihadist terrorism] is already excusing it to a
degree.”
“France isn’t
ready,” said Rechtman. “I’m not sure it ever will be.”
Authors:
Nicholas Vinocur
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