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The Paris terror attacks and their geopolitical implications

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By: Deborah Asseraf

US Marines and French Gendarmie inspect weapons as part of a 2014 training exercise. US Marines and French Gendarmerie exercise
US Marines and French Gendarmie inspect weapons as part of a training exercise. Source: Wikimedia.

Six coordinated terror attacks, involving seven terrorists took place in East Paris and near the Stade de France at Saint Denis on the evening of Friday, November 13. In Saint Denis, three terrorists blew themselves up near the stadium, while supporters inside attended a friendly France – Germany football match. Among the five attacks in East Paris, one was a suicide bombing, at the Boulevard Voltaire, and four others were shootings. This included the Bataclan concert hall hostage crisis, during which as soon as police launched the assault the four attackers detonated the bombs they were carrying. At least 132 people were killed and 350 wounded.

Islamic State responsibility

Islamic State claimed responsibility soon after in a statement that defined the attacks as the ‘first of the storm’. Indeed, France is likely to be a primary target for the terrorist group. For example, a video released in September 2014 attributed to Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, known as an ISIS spokesperson, instructed followers around the world to kill citizens of the countries involved in the coalition: ‘If you can kill a disbelieving American or European – especially the spiteful and filthy French – or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.’

Using the same rhetoric in another video released in October 2014, a French ISIS militant warned France that ‘as many bombs you dropped in Iraq and Sham [Syria], you will have as many murders, as many killings, like our brother Mohammed Merah did. You are afraid of one brother, there will be thousands and thousands in the future’. The call for attacks in France has become a key element of ISIS propaganda directed towards French potential recruits.

France is a main pool of recruitment for Islamic State. Among the 30,000 ISIS ‘soldiers’ in Syria and Iraq, most are foreign fighters, and in 2014 about 1,200 were said to be French. According to a 2015 report by a French Senate investigation committee dedicated to countering jihadist networks in France and Europe, 1500 French citizens who fled to Syria have been identified by the intelligence services. Accurate policy responses to handle the cases of those who return to France are yet to be found. The antiterrorism bill passed on November 13, 2014 modifies statutory law regulating the entry of foreigners but does not tackle the issue of French fighters coming back from Syria. The first article of the bill only allows authorities to prevent a suspected ‘jihadi candidate’ from going abroad.

At present, the intelligence administration has registered 4,000 people in ‘fiches S’, administrative memos compiling information about persons who are known for their ‘Islamic radicalization’ on French territory. One of the Bataclan terrorists, Omar Ismaïl Mostefaï was registered in a ‘fiche S’ for ‘radicalization’.

Internal responses to the crisis: a national emergency plan

President François Hollande, who was rushed out of the Saint Denis stadium as soon as the explosions were heard, immediately addressed the Nation that night. He called for an emergency ministerial meeting and announced two measures. President Hollande first declared a state of emergency, and second announced the closing of French borders. If these domestic responses to the crisis are mainly consensual in France, the issue of external action in Syria remains the subject of fierce debate.

The state of emergency is an exceptional legal situation in which French State authorities are allowed to take special action outside of the framework of ordinary law. Prefects (state representatives in regions) are allowed to impose bans on traffic, curfews, large gatherings, and allow searches and raids without warrants. The state of emergency is based on a 1955 law, passed in response Algerian National Liberation Front terror attacks in 1954. It was first used three times during the Algerian War of Independence. A state of emergency was last declared in 2005 on the occasion of the large-scale riots in the Parisian suburbs. In 2015, the state of emergency is not only applied at the local level, but to the entire national territory. It allows for the cancellation of cultural events, gatherings, the closure of public monuments and museums, and increased levels of security and surveillance. Accordingly, 1,500 soldiers were deployed in the capital and nearly as many police officers. In order to implement efficient border controls, customs staff were reinforced.

As part of the state of emergency, 168 antiterrorist raids took place on Sunday, November 15 and overnight into Monday, November 16, in the homes of potential terrorists registered in a ‘fiche S’ and 23 people were arrested. The raids were conducted in Bobigny (Northern Paris), Toulouse, Grenoble, Strasbourg, Lille-Roubaix, Marseille and Lyon, where a rocket launcher was discovered. In Villefranche-sur-Saône, close to Lyon, heavy weaponry was found, including a Kalashnikov assault riffle, a rocket launcher, pistols, and bullets. Aside from the current investigation that led to identify French and Belgian terrorist cells, raids current searches aim to dismantling other networks. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve stated: ‘It is just the beginning’.

External response: is France at war?

In an official address on November 14, President Hollande stated that: ‘What happened yesterday in Paris and in Saint Denis close to the Stade de France was an act of war. Faced with war, the country has to take appropriate decisions. An act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, Daesh, a jihadist army against France, against the values we defend throughout the world, against who we are, a free country that speaks to the whole world’. The use of the expression ‘act of war’ is a crucial step for France. It suggests the terrorist attacks carried out on French territory have external belligerent outcomes. Designating ISIS as an ‘army’ seems very delicate considering the situation on the ground. Islamic State may have its own institutions, control territory, and a population, but it is not recognized as a state on the international scene. Hence, ISIS is not in control of a regular army but rather comprises a various range of actors from former Saddam Hussein officials to jihadist terror groups including the former Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Declaring war against ‘the Caliphate’ is no less than declaring a war against terror. If the very term resembles G. W. Bush’s rhetoric, it can also be feared that such a war is already lost. Regarding the fact that terrorists carrying out such so-called ‘acts of war’ are French citizens, it seems impossible to consider ISIS as a defined enemy in the form of an army.

It is not clear whether President Hollande is really declaring war based on a use of international law. At the moment the French and US-led coalition against ISIS launched in 2014 includes Western countries (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands) as well as Arab and Middle-Eastern countries (Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Turkey, United Arab Emirates). Nevertheless, the coalition intervention, consisting of airstrikes as well as arming and training support to the Kurds is completely informal. Western action could hardly be an UN-backed intervention, as a unanimity vote at the Security Council, would be likely impossible considering Russia’s pro-Assad agenda.

Nonetheless, the use of the term ‘act of war’ by President Hollande could be a way to legitimize an intervention under NATO provisions. Indeed, the 1949 Washington Treaty (article 5) states: ‘The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.’

Moreover, in 1999 NATO members recognized acts of terror as armed attacks that possibly bound allies to collective defence: ‘Any armed attack on the territory of the Allies, from whatever direction would be covered by Articles 5 and 6 of the Washington treaty. However, Alliance security must also take account of the global context. Alliance security interests can be affected by other risks of a wider nature, including acts of terrorism’.

As an act of war opens the legal possibility for a use of force under international law, France could call for its NATO allies to support and retaliate against ISIS and escalate the conflict. However, legitimizing war against ISIS through international law might also lead the nations involved to acknowledge that the earlier coalition was illegal. On the night of November 15, ten French fighter jets dropped twenty bombs in their biggest raid in Syria so far. They targeted Islamic State’s strongholds in Raqqa in coordination with US forces.

A strong response

While French intentions regarding the coalition against ISIS are not completely clear, it seems very unlikely that troops would ever be dispatched to the ground. However, the latest attacks will no doubt affect French foreign policy, and an escalation in airstrikes with support of the coalition may be occurring, as President Hollande vowed a ‘merciless response’ to ISIS. In order to strengthen French air force in Irak and Syria, the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier will leave Toulon for the Persian Gulf on November 18. It will carry eighteen Rafale and eight Super Étendard aircrafts, and join the six Rafale and six Mirage already based in Jordan.

Yet, relevant internal solutions must be found within France. The primary threat to French security is domestic. The country’s immediate enemies are to be fought on French territory. Internal policies dedicated to tackling, preventing, and understanding radicalisation are now essential in averting future attacks.

Deborah Asseraf is a graduate student at Sciences Po, Paris, specializing in the field of public policy and law. A research student in History at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS Paris) she is interested in international relations and politics.

Responding to terrorism: the views from Beirut and Paris

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By Strife

Beirut Paris

On November 13, three teams linked to ISIS carried out seven seemingly coordinated attacks across Paris, killing 139 people and bringing the city to its knees. Sadly, this was not the only attack this past week. On November 12, 43 people were also killed in a double suicide blast carried out by ISIS in Beirut targeting Shia’s. Also on November 13, ISIS carried out a dual attack targeting Shia’s in Baghdad, killing 26, while several people were killed in a suicide attack targeting a mosque in Shibam, Yemen.

While Paris continues to reel, it also appears to dominate the media and there has been a growing sense that not all victims of terrorism are viewed the same. A rising chorus of voices are asking, ‘what about us?’

Today, Strife talked to recent War Studies graduates Talar Demirdjian and Helene Trehin, who were in Beirut and Paris (respectively) at the time of the attacks to discuss their experience and perceptions of responses to the attacks.

Can you describe where you were and what the situation was like at the time of the attack in Beirut or Paris?

Talar Demirdjian in Beirut: I was at home when the bombings occurred. Ironically, Beirut hadn’t seen a bombing of this sort in a while, so we were stunned at first, and absolutely livid next. It’s one thing when our internal struggles get in the way of our everyday lives (political turmoil, corruption, garbage crisis etc.), it’s another thing when a ruthless insurgent terrorist group brutally murders our innocent people.

Helene Trehin in Paris: Two of my friends and I were in a bar further South West when the first attacks erupted in Central Paris outside the Stade de France and in the 10th district. The football game was being broadcast in the pub but (surprisingly) we didn’t hear immediately about the explosions and shootings and when I left the bar around 21:45, the French and German football teams were still playing, while the first tweets reacting to the attacks started to appear on my phone! Rapidly, more and more channels and people started commenting on this unprecedented episode, and by the time I arrived home the Bataclan attack, first described as a hostage crisis, had begun.

What kind of response to the attack did you observe from your fellow citizens?

Beirut: The anomaly that is Lebanon, is that, we, the people, live a life with a gaping hole in our chest that we cover up with Band-Aids. We’ve been hurt so many times, by so many different entities, that in a way we have become desensitized. We grieve and mourn, get angry, curse this country, curse the Middle East for being so volatile, curse the West for always interfering in the wrong place and the wrong time, and curse the fact that we have to live in a place that offers no safety. Then we become oddly patriotic, praying for all the lives lost, vowing that we’ll make a change, and then we forget and carry on with our lives. It is a vicious cycle that we must commit to, or else we’d lose our minds.

Paris: Everything happened very quickly. I spent hours on my phone calling my friends and on my computer watching the dozens of graphic images and scenes of terror coming out of Facebook and Twitter 

For the first 30 minutes, news about the Paris attacks trended as the death toll reached to 128, shortly before midnight. However, rapidly, Parisians living in the targeted places started to use the social media to share messages of support and show their solidarity. On Twitter, the #PorteOuverte (#OpenDoor) hashtag started being used by Parisians to offer shelter and safety to visitors and those stranded. Also, the Facebook safety check enabled us to notify friends and family members that we were unharmed and quickly know loved ones were OK.

What kind of response did you observe from the international community?

Beirut: Another reason for our anger, is the ignorance that we are faced with by the international community, making us feel like second rate citizens, which was emphasized even more by the attacks that occurred in Paris, a day after the Burj al-Barajneh suicide bombings in Beirut. We also mourn the losses that they faced and empathize with them, as we are able to.

However, we’re aggravated by how we are discriminated against by even the simplest of things, like how Facebook’s “Safe Check” didn’t activate for us, or how we don’t get an app to add our Flag on our profile pictures – these small things emphasize how the world does not regard us with as much concern as it does the people of first world countries.

In addition to that, the way the western media portrayed the bombings, as “attacks on a Hezbollah stronghold.” It was as if it were some type of military attack, instead of outright terrorism, when in fact, it was just an attack against innocent civilians at a shopping mall. It proves that to the rest of the world, we are just pawns in game of powers in the Middle East, and our lives have no real value.

Paris: Surprisingly, the first messages I got asking if I was safe were coming from my friends in the United States and Canada. Actually, President Obama was one of the first to comment and condemn the violence. This morning, when I checked Facebook, friends from all over the world had used the hashtag #PrayForParis to show support, some of them even using French words and hashtags such as #JeSuisParis or #NousSommesUnis.

What implications will the attack have on your life and in your community?

Beirut: Sadly, this attack will hardly have any real impact on our community, because attacks have been carried out by other actors so many times before. However, perhaps since this has been a publicly identified attack by ISIS, the Lebanese government might take future precautions, but I won’t get my hopes too high.

In a country where our basic human rights and needs are rarely met, how can we trust our leader to do their most important job, which is keeping the Lebanese people safe? These leaders have illegally extended their own mandate, have not fulfilled their jobs by electing a new a president, instated a proper law for the garbage crisis, or allowed Lebanese women to pass on their nationality to their children.

Paris: “If we are facing in the right direction all we have to do is to keep on walking.” Today, Parisians, fellow French citizens, and the international community are united and showing solidarity in the wake of the disaster. Yes we are shocked by what happened but we cannot be afraid of the future because of an attack and more importantly we must not become a monster while trying to defeat a monster. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness” Martin Luther King Junior said, and when it’s dark we need light. Last January the same kind of terror attacks happened with Charlie Hebdo, but despite the fear of terrorist incidents we stayed together and united. We have to keep on walking.

What kind of distinct pressures have you noticed in your community in relation to these types of attacks?

Beirut: The biggest issues that usually result from these types of attacks are finger pointing and blaming of one party to another for being the perpetrator. However, since ISIS took credit for this attack, the real result might be actual unnerving fear by the Lebanese public, who for now, have been faced with many hardships. Historically though, most bombings were very political and calculated, whereas when dealing with a terrorist group like ISIS, who has known allies in Lebanon in the form of Jebhat al Nusra as well as expansionist ideals, things might actually get messy.

Paris: After the Charlie Hebdo attack last January, I was particularly afraid that it would increase anti-Muslim sentiments but, surprisingly, many reports suggested that those incidents did not contribute to a rise in racism. Today, the situation is different. The economic situation has changed, but the refugees’ crisis and the growing divisions between EU members about the Syrian conflict and ISIS have led the countries to turn inward. As a matter of fact, the French President announced that France would reinstate border controls for several weeks, during COP21.

Terrorism is a phenomenon and its success depends on how a targeted nation will react. Yes, terrorist attacks are politically loaded and emotionally charged but we must not become a monster to defeat a monster.

In your opinion, what positive steps can be taken both domestically and internationally to prevent/respond to such attacks? 

Beirut: The unfortunate situation is that the bombing in Paris (not in Beirut), will likely result in Islamophobic rhetoric being spread. This has already started, which will in turn cause a ripple effect into governments who will restart their “crackdown” on the Middle East, likely sending in drones, potentially taking innocent lives, and furthering the notion perpetuated by ISIS that the west is evil and hates the people of Middle East. Such actions give ISIS fuel to spread their ideologies even further, thus a never ending cycle is is born. To contradict that, the international community must find other, more strategic ways to combat organizations like ISIS. Infiltrating and attacking the Middle East has proven, as seen under George W. Bush for example, to be a failure of epic proportions.

Paris: Unfortunately, there is a lot of media misinformation allowing rash judgements about the terrorist identities, for example. As soon as ISIS claimed responsibility for these attacks, anti-Muslim virulent messages started trending on Twitter and Facebook. What we need is to stop using religion for political purposes. People fail to grasp the meaning of words, to understand the purpose of religion, to see the polarization that attends religious issues, and this has overshadowed any nuanced discussion of the matter. “Our faith must go to music, kissing, life, champagne and joy” Johan Sfar happily said!

Talar Demirdjian has recently obtained her Masters degree in Terrorism, Security, & Society from King’s College London, after completing a BA in International affairs & Diplomacy from Notre Dame University-Louaize, and has recently returned to Beirut, Lebanon, her hometown. Her previous work experience include a long stint as a Social Media Manager and copywriter, she was even the former webmaster and editor for Strife. However, she is still in pursuit of finding her role in making the world a better place. You can follow her on Twitter @AcidBurn_TD.

Helene Trehin has recently obtained her Masters degree in Conflict, Security and Development from King’s College London. After completing a BSc. in International Studies at the University of Montreal in Canada, she moved back to France where she worked for the French Ministry of Defence as an analyst. She is currently account manager for The French Polar Cluster, and Coordinator of the Arctic Encounter Paris 2015 Symposium on Arctic Business, Economics and Policy.

Made in prison: Copenhagen and the Paris attacks

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By Charlie de Rivaz:

The cafe in Copenhagen where the gunman attacked. Photo: Benno Hansen (CC)
The cafe in Copenhagen where the gunman attacked. Photo: Benno Hansen (CC)

When news trickled through about Saturday’s attacks in Copenhagen, it was difficult to avoid a sense of déjà vu. Another Islamic extremist attacks another cartoonist. Then he targets Jews. Was this another Charlie Hebdo? Another gruesome episode in the increasingly depressing battle between radical Islam and the West?

This is not another Charlie Hebdo, there were important differences that should impact on the way we understand and react to the Copenhagen attacks. However, there were also similarities, one of which shines a light on a little-reported aspect of the Charlie Hebdo story: the importance of prisons in radicalising young Muslims.

Copenhagen is not another Charlie Hebdo

Why was Copenhagen not another Charlie Hebdo? First, unlike the gunmen in Paris, the gunman in Copenhagen, named as 22-year-old Omar El-Hussein by Danish media, was not a trained militant with links to al-Qaeda groups in the Middle East. He was a gang member with convictions for crimes like grievous bodily harm, burglary and dealing in weapons. There is no indication that El-Hussein had even travelled abroad, let alone to countries with terrorist training camps. Indeed, the Danish Prime Minister said she wanted to “make it very clear” that she had “no indication at this stage that [El-Hussein] was part of a [terrorist] cell”.

Contrast this with the gunmen in Paris: Said and Cherif Kouachi had both been known to police for militant Islamist activities since 2003, when Cherif was involved in sending would-be jihadists to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq. He was arrested in 2005 trying to escape to Syria and imprisoned in 2008. Two years later he was named in the plot to free Smain Ait Ali Belkacem from jail. Belkacem was serving life for the 1995 Paris metro bombing that wounded 30 people. Yemeni sources say that both Kouachi brothers had trained in camps run by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in 2011 in the deserts of Marib in Yemen. The other gunman in Paris, Amedy Coulibaly, had also been imprisoned for his role in the 2010 plot to free Belkacem.

The second important difference is that while the Paris attacks were coordinated and carried out with near-military precision, the Copenhagen attacks were carried out by a lone gunman and appear to have been somewhat haphazard.

The Kouachi brothers struck hard and fast in Paris. Armed with Kalshnikov assault rifles, they identified and killed their targets, mostly cartoonists, as well as killing two policemen in their escape. Coulibaly similarly succeeded in taking the shoppers in a Kosher supermarket hostage. He killed four of the hostages. The fact that some 80,000 police and security personnel were mobilised in response to the attacks shows just how effective the gunmen were.

By contrast, El-Hussein only succeeded in killing one man in his initial attack on the café, documentary film-maker Finn Noergaard. The person who was probably his real target, cartoonist Lars Vilks, escaped unscathed. Vilks has been targeted several times since drawing pictures of the Prophet Muhammad dressed as a dog in 2007. The café where Vilks was due to speak was being guarded by armed police and security agents, as well as Vilks’ own bodyguards, so it is difficult to see how El-Hussein ever thought that he might replicate the kind of mass killings seen in Paris. His later shooting of a synagogue guard seemed unplanned and opportunistic.

Copenhagen is not the same as Charlie Hebdo. It was not a well-planned attack led by trained gunmen with links to terrorist groups; on the contrary, it was a clumsy attempt to replicate the Paris killings by a lone gunmen without any terrorist links or training.

The prison connection

Of course, the intentions behind both attacks appear similar: to kill those cartoonists who have published depictions of the Prophet Muhammad (often in provocative poses) and to kill Jews. This is why the copycat theory is plausible.

But the more interesting similarity relates to where these intentions come from, and, in particular, where the motivation to kill is cultivated. This is where the role of prison is key.

El-Hussein attacked the café just two weeks after his release from prison, where he had served two years for stabbing a man on a subway train. It was while in prison that he became radicalised. The head of the country’s prison and probation service had become so concerned about El-Hussein’s radicalisation that he informed Danish intelligence. It is currently unclear exactly who was involved in turning this gangster into a religious extremist.

In France the key players are well known. In 2005 Cherif Kouachi found himself in the infamous Fleury-Merogis prison, the largest in Europe with 150% over-crowding and a culture of violence, drugs and decay. There he met Djamel Beghal, who would become his chief inspiration and mentor, and Coulibaly, the third gunman in the Paris attacks.

Beghal was halfway through a 10-year sentence for his part in a plot to bomb the US embassy in Paris. In the late 1990s he had visited the Finsbury Park mosque in London to hear the radical preachings of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada, and by the turn of the century was considered one of al-Qaeda’s chief recruiting agents in Europe after returning from training in Afghanistan. According to Jean-Charles Brisard, the head of the French Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, “Beghal was in direct contact with the highest ranking members of al Qaeda at the time.”

Beghal was the defining influence on Kouachi and Coulibaly, and they both continued to visit him in the south of France after Beghal had been placed under house arrest there in 2009. Although Said Kouachi never went to prison, it is safe to assume that what his brother learned inside was passed on.

The key role that prisons play in radicalising young Muslims was little reported in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. We heard much about the gunmen’s marginalised background, their difficult childhoods, their upbringing among the estates and the decaying parks of the banlieues; but we heard little about how their deep-seated sense of injustice and dislocation was moulded into the motivation to kill. The attacks in Copenhagen have now put the role of prisons centre-stage. It is while serving in prison that many of these young Muslims are turned from angry young men into religious extremists carrying the motivation to kill in the name of Allah.

The Copenhagen attacks were not the same as Charlie Hebdo, but it is important to recognise that the killers’ murderous motivations were formed in the same place: in the cold corridors of prison.

Charlie de Rivaz is an MA student on the Conflict, Security and Development programme at King’s College, London. For three years he worked in Argentina and Colombia as an English teacher and journalist. His main interests include the political economy of war, international human rights law, conflict resolution, and state-failure and state-building. Charlie is currently the Managing Editor of the Strife blog.

The Paris Attacks: a threat to French unity

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By Deborah Asseraf:

Photo: Olivier Ortelpa (creative commons)
The demonstration in the Place de la Republique, Paris, on 11 January. Photo: Olivier Ortelpa (creative commons)

As France mourns 17 of its citizens following the recent Paris attacks, hard times are also synonymous with national union. On 11 January 56 world leaders marched in Paris along with 3.7 million people to show their commitment to universal values such as freedom of speech and human dignity. Unanimous condemnation of the terror acts that occurred between 7-9 January transcends political divisions and ideologies. However the commemorations are likely to be subject to political appropriation by a range of actors and parties. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the spontaneous reaction animating civil society will result in any coherent long-term agenda.

A new form of terror

On 7 January, two masked gunmen stormed the offices of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo during an editorial meeting (11:30 am), killing 12 people. The paper is well known for its publication of the prophet Muhammad caricatures. In just a few minutes the assailants shot a maintenance worker, a police officer assigned as a bodyguard for the paper’s editor, seven journalists and caricaturists, a guest at the editorial meeting and a national police officer. Armed with AK-47 assault rifles, a shotgun and an RPG launcher, the gunmen managed to escape by car and killed a wounded police officer lying on the pavement. The Kouachi brothers, who carried out the attack, escaped towards the Val de Marne, in the North-East of Paris. Taking a printing house, they resisted a siege by the police for hours in the afternoon of 9 January.

On 8 January, Amedy Coulibaly shot and killed a municipal police officer in Montrouge, south of Paris. The next day Coulibaly seized a kosher grocery store in Porte de Vincennes, a very quiet area in North Paris. Two people were shot as the gunman entered the store and two others during the three-hour hostage crisis. The police launched an assault against the assailant at the end of the afternoon at approximately the same time as the assault carried out against the Kouachi brothers.

The attacks have not been officially claimed by any terror organisation, suggesting the emergence a new form of terrorism that opens opportunities to individuals who are willing to die for a cause with no need to officially belong to a local or global movement. This operating mode is reminiscent of the 15 December Sydney hostage crisis, which involved a single individual who claimed he had links with the Islamic State. As Australian authorities fear copycat attacks, it seems legitimate for France to worry as well in a context where the range of possible threats is widening.

Blurry motives and difficult responses

What happened last week has been described as France’s 9/11, suggesting that the country has reached a critical turning point that will usher in a new era of war against its evil enemy. Nonetheless, the so-called ‘enemy’ seems hardly definable or reachable. Indeed, shedding light on the motives of the attack is difficult if not impossible. Recordings of conversations between Coulibaly and his Jewish hostages emerged in the media after the store’s telephone was left off the hook. They show a confused assailant who justifies his action by referring to France’s foreign policy, highlighting the fact that Muslims are being killed all around the world. He gives the examples of Mali and Syria, where France is part of the coalition against the Islamic State. In a video that emerged on 11 January, two days after his death, Coulibaly is seen pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, self-proclaimed chief of the caliphate, in very poor Arabic.

As the motives of the attacks are blurry, finding long-term coherent responses is extremely difficult. Implementing surveillance policies is one thing but it does not help with tackling the other issue of radicalisation. In this regard, French statutory law has recently been adapted to the jihadist threat with an anti-terrorist bill passed in November 2014. On the one hand it allows authorities to confiscate passports and IDs of volunteers for jihad willing to leave for Syria and Iraq. On the other, it also creates a new kind of criminal offence: ‘individual terrorist enterprise’, which targets self-radicalized terrorists-to-be.

The Paris killings will also feed in to political discourses that are likely to gradually undermine national unity. On 11 January, about 4 million people marched through the streets of Paris and other French cities under the banner of democracy and freedom against terror and ‘barbarity’. Rather than presaging a new political path, the support showed in unity rallies throughout France will only be transient. It goes without saying that ‘islamophobia’ is on the rise as mosques are now being targeted all across France. An aggravated context of discrimination won’t solve the problem but rather anchor some of its causes. Nevertheless, the security question and the fight against an internal enemy may shape French politics for a long time to come.

Jewish emigration to Israel

The reasons that brought the terrorists to Charlie Hebdo are clear: killing journalists and their subversive ideas. They also shot police officers for what they epitomise: the idea of order and law enforcement. By contrast, the last main assault at the Hypercacher of Porte de Vincennes was aimed at killing Jews. Indeed, the Jewish community appears as a constant in the terrorist equation. Only two years after the Toulouse killings at the Jewish school Ozar Hatorah by a French Muslim extremist, Jews feel abandoned by authorities.

In Paris Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid his respects to the victims of the kosher store at the Synagogue de la Victoire but also encouraged French Jews to make ‘aliyah’: which means ascend in Hebrew. According to Israeli leaders, French Jews are meant to emigrate to Israel as hostile Europe is not their home anymore. As a matter of fact, Jewish emigration has skyrocketed these past few years, reaching the peak of 6000 French Jews last year. As controversial as it sounds, the message got through. Because anti-semitism is on the rise, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced the deployment of the army to support 4700 police agents to protect Jewish places of worship and schools. The government’s stance is aimed at reassuring French Jews, as shown in prime minister Manuel Valls’ speech at the Assemblée nationale.

France’s social fabric is loosening and its political context is deeply affected by recent events. Even though the union nationale is still being proclaimed, no solutions to the heightened tensions have yet been found. Not only do the French fear an internal enemy, but in the secular country of laïcité, religious communities are being set against each other. The prospect of appeasement seems distant.

Deborah Asseraf is a postgraduate student at Sciences Po, Paris, specializing in the field of public policy, and president of Sciences Po Public Affairs Master’s society. She is interested in international relations and politics.