The French Riots
Day 3 and spreading
Shamanic believes they're not that big a deal, Michael Van Der Galien thinks it's a war with "street terrorists". In this case at least, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.
In the comments at Michael's post, someone left a long list of US race riots from the late 60's, all of which were far more violent than the current riots in France. I'm too young to remember any of those, but I do recall the riot in LA following the Rodney King verdict.
There, as in France, the reason for the rioting went much further than the nominal trigger. At its base, the black community in LA didn't trust the police or believe they were being treated fairly by them. The high-profile verdict sparked the underlying rage into full rioting. The same dynamic can be seen in France. The deaths of the two kids triggered the violence, but the rage that's fueling it didn't spring up out of air. It's built on prejudice, perceived or otherwise, and it colours how these events are seen by the communities affected.
Many in Villiers-le-Bel do not believe the authorities' version of events on Sunday night.
The initial results of a police inquiry suggested that officers were not to blame for the accident that killed two teenagers.
The local prosecutor said the boys' motorbike had crashed into a police patrol car at high speed, adding that three witnesses had backed up this version of events.
. . .
One police source said more investigations were needed, but here again the inquiry does not seem to be working on the premise that any "serious error" was committed.
"The cops, they have all the rights," one resident told the newspaper Liberation.
"We must get revenge," he added, "they left [the scene of the crash] as if they'd just run over a pigeon."
These riots and the ones from 2005 haven't reached anywhere near the level of violence and damage that the LA riots reached, but if the situation is left to fester, they will continue, and continue to grow, until they reach that level.
I don't envy the French police the job they have ahead of them to get order restored once again, but I'm fairly sure they'll be able to do that without putting tanks onto the streets. That's when the real work should begin.
They have to find a way to make the people there trust them; to make them feel like they're being treated in a fair manner and not like some second-class citizens. Find some way, some fashion, to properly integrate the immigrant-descended population into the rest of society. Given the current French leadership, I'm not so certain there will be any attempt to do so, which is unfortunate.
Because when your only response is to use force to keep a population under control, the amount of force you need to use keeps rising, as do the costs and retaliations.
Then they will have a war on their hands.
