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Tackling Terror
The police chief with responsibility for London's anti-terror campaign has warned that his forces are tracking a number of suspects thought to be planning further atrocities like the July Tube bombings. He complained that winning support from Britain's Muslim community is proving to be a longer and more difficult process than he imagined. Meanwhile across the Channel, French cops swooped and arrested eleven Algerians suspected of being in the early stages of planning attacks on the French transport system.
France's Muslim community is two to three times as large as Britain's. In many respects, it could be argued that this community has greater reasons to have grievances against the state than in the UK, where Muslims are largely left alone to pursue their religious interests. French Muslims have seen bans on traditional headscarves in schools and the deportation of extremist preachers - Britain tolerates all levels of religious displays, even forcing schools to accept children who demand to wear the full-body burhka. Britain has also been unable to eject any hate preachers in the months since the London atrocities - despite government promises to do just that.
Furthermore, France's Muslims have two iconic moments on which to hang their anger towards the French state and society: The first was the Paris Massacre of 1961, when somewhere between 32 and 200 Algerian protestors died in a police attack. The media silence surrounding the killings has only recently started to break down. However, in contrast to the rather less bloody Bloody Sunday in Londonderry, French Muslims have been unwilling or unable to use the event as a rallying point for either extremists or opponents of the French justice system.
The second iconic event was the rather more recent success of anti-immigrant fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen in France's 2002 presidential election. Exploiting France's larger-than-usual grievance vote and the tattered state of the mainstream left opposition, Le Pen nicked into second place in the poll to face President Jacques Chirac in the run-off. Le Pen would never win the run-off (and, indeed, he was roundly whipped by Chirac in the second stage) but a man who has based his career on opposition to France's large Muslim community scored an enormous propaganda victory.
Of course, France's Muslims do not have the gripe that their government joined the US in invading Iraq - but this does not seem to have deterred the eleven suspects arrested on Tuesday. The eleven, arrested in Paris suburbs and in Normandy, are suspected of membership of an Algerian terror group linked to al Qaeda. The group has its roots in the Islamist fundamentalist terror bands that slaughtered thousands across Algeria in the early 1990s. It has since turned its attentions to jihad outside its home country.
According to French newspapers, they were suspected of planning attacks on the Paris metro, an airport and the headquarters of France's anti-terror unit.
The sweep was ordered by France's top anti-terror judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who is granted extensive powers to ensure that France does not become what he describes as a "high pressure zone" for terrorists.
Bruguiere's actions have met with little or no opposition from the media, opposition parties or legal activists - and they are said to enjoy the widespread support of France's citizens. Last year, when the US returned suspects from Guantanamo Bay to France and Britain, the contrast in reception in the two countries was telling. Britain's media gave the men a heroes reception which might have been more appropriate for hostages returned to liberty than several men who have not been able to explain the circumstances of their presence in al Qaeda territory to anyone's satisfaction. Reports that the British authorities would be obliged to spend £1 million per man per year on surveillance were relegated to the footnotes.
In France, however, returned suspects were spirited away to a detention centre in Normandy, where they can be held for another three years for questioning. Little has been heard of the men since.
The Muslim backlash that worries authorities (and is regularly threatened by British "community representatives") does not seem to have occurred in this case. Perhaps France's Muslims are more realistic than those in Britain - after all, ordinary working Muslims suffer when France is attacked, too: The 1995 bombings of Paris' transport system by Algerian terrorists being a case in point. One bomb, which killed 8 people and injured 150, was placed on a suburban rail line that served several Muslim-dominated suburbs.
Ten years ago today, the prime suspect Khaled Kelkal was killed in a shootout with police. Safé Bourrada, one of the men arrested on Tuesday, is alleged to have recruited Kelkal to terrorism. He was released from prison after being held on other terror-related charges in 2003.
A Google France News search of Kelkal's name this morning did not throw up dozens of pages on mourning, community unrest or legal challenges to mark the anniversary of his death - indeed, Kelkal's name only appears as a footnote to identify Bourrada's alleged background.
France's tough terror laws were introduced as a response to the Paris bombings and were tightened when European Islamists stepped up their activity before and after the 9/11 attacks on the US. There has been no backlash, no hugely successful recruitment drive by terror groups in response to the crackdown - indeed, when new groups have appeared France has swiftly knocked them down. It would be misleading to imply that France's police are widely admired by the nation's Muslim community, but what does appear to be true is that like their fellow citizens, France's Muslims are willing to tolerate tough policing measures as long as it prevents terrorists from harming them, too.
Just what are Britain's authorities scared of?
