Debating Hollande’s ‘War’ Response to the Paris Attacks
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — More than two weeks after terrorists attacked Paris in the name of the Islamic State, the “war” declared by President François Hollande of France is taking shape, sort of. French planes have bombed Raqqa, the Syrian city held by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. French police officers in full combat mode have carried out more than a thousand raids across the country. Mr. Hollande has embarked on a global tour to patch together an anti-Islamic State alliance. And yet for all the high-profile activity, it is still not clear what kind of war France is prepared to wage, against whom and where. Even the use of the word “war” has created discomfort. Both the Germans and the Italians have studiously avoided using it, even as they pledge their full support to Paris. In France and elsewhere, commentators and intellectuals have taken issue with it. The debate echoes the one in the United States after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror.” Then, and now, the questions include the philosophical (when is war “just”?), the practical (how to identify an elusive enemy) and the existential (can such wars ever be over, let alone won?). Perhaps the most pertinent question this time is geographical: Where is the main battleground? Here in France, in the grim suburbs, or banlieues, where so many native-born jihadists grew up? Or in Syria and Iraq, where their black-clad heroes have carved out a so-called caliphate? The Hollande government has engaged rapidly on both fronts, with some success. France, which had been on the sidelines of negotiations over Syria, has taken the lead in trying to coordinate the disparate coalitions against the Islamic State. At home, aggressive police tactics eliminated the presumed architect of the Nov. 13 attacks, even though another key suspect is still on the lam. France has prodded Europe to improve border security and intelligence sharing. But none of this necessarily adds up to a winning strategy. Most experts agree that without reliable support from local ground forces, the bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq is unlikely to defeat the Islamic State. After the downing of a Russian fighter jet by Turkey, a global alliance seems more unlikely than ever. Most important, neither the bombing, nor the diplomacy, nor the police raids are likely to sway some unemployed French youths — many of them second-generation immigrants — who seem to have turned to jihad as an outlet for their resentment and alienation. “The essential problem for France is thus not the ‘caliphate’ in the Syrian desert which will evaporate sooner or later like an old mirage that has turned into a nightmare,” wrote Olivier Roy, a professor of political Islam, in the French newspaper Le Monde recently. “The problem is the revolt of these young people.” This time, however, the Islamic State may have gone too far, argues Gilles Kepel, a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, who is also an expert on Islam in France. If one goal of jihadist terrorism is to turn local societies against their Muslim citizens, thus mobilizing more young Muslims to join the cause and foment a civil war, then the Nov. 13 attacks may have backfired, Mr. Kepel said in the newspaper Libération. “On the one hand, they showed their capacity to kill lots of people,” Mr. Kepel said. “On the other hand, in my view, they didn’t succeed in mobilizing anyone.” The indiscriminate massacre of young people — some of them second-generation immigrants like their killers — seemed to shock and horrify everyone in France, uniting rather than dividing society. This was in contrast to reactions last January to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery store, when some young people in the banlieues refused to join in national displays of solidarity. If that makes the Nov. 13 attacks a strategic mistake on the part of the enemy, that would be welcome news for France’s struggling “war.” |