From Geostrategy Direct, subscription. A lot has been covered on RB before, but a good summary here.
French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy has been trying to contain an Arab uprising whose fighters have been trained in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq and possess everything from light weapons to anti-aircraft missiles.
The French police are outgunned, and the govt has no leadership.
In a classified report, the French military has concluded that a network of 25,000 Muslim fighters are participating in the worst violence in France in more than 40 years. The report said the so-called mujahadeen, or holy warriors, have been trained in guerrilla warfare, light weapons and intelligence. Many of them are loyal to Al Qaida chief in Iraq, Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi and make a living from drugs, prostitution and loan-sharking.
As long as it is being done to infidels, its OOOOH Kay with the Holy Warriorsâ¢.
Sarkozy was not taken by surprise by the Muslim riots, sparked by the electrocution of two young Muslims fleeing police and hiding in a power substation in Paris. The interior minister just didn't do anything about it.
Sarkozy acknowledged that prior to the outbreak of violence late last month, some Muslim neighborhoods in Paris were ablaze nearly every night. Sarkozy said rioters were torching up to 40 cars a night in Muslim neighborhoods in the French capital. In the space of a few months, the interior minister said, 9,000 police cars had been stoned in these neighborhoods.
The battle-hardened Muslim fighters dismiss French riot police, who have not been trained to combat Arab guerrilla warriors. The police are not equipped to deal with legions of Arab fighters who rush toward them with firebombs and light weapons.
Neither is the French Government under Jacque and Dom.
At this point, French officials are close to throwing in the towel. Their main concern now is to stop Muslims from capturing the heart of Paris.
Better call the Foreign Legion. You are running out of options. And Duece Four is not available.
Thousands of police patrolled the center of the city to prevent rioters from attacking the Eiffel Tower and Champs Elysees. Muslim insurgents had used Internet sites to urge attacks against French tourism and national monuments.
Better have a few K near the Louvre, too.
"One can easily imagine the places where we must be very vigilant," French police chief Michel Gaudin said.
For Western diplomats and intelligence analysts, the question isn't why France is burning: It's why the Muslims haven't lit the match until now? For a decade, French authorities watched helplessly as pro-Al Qaida elements first took over Muslim neighborhoods and then cities such as Lille, Lyon, Marseille and Strasbourg. French police were ordered to stay out of Muslim neighborhoods that surround virtually every city. Authorities ceded control and chose to deal with Muslim-controlled municipal councils.
The Appeasement Plan⢠seemed to have backfired. Maybe a Blue Ribbon Commission could get the govt back on track.
Intelligence sources said Al Zarqawi operatives decided to jump on the bandwagon after the second night of rioting in Muslim neighborhoods in Paris. On Oct. 30, they decided to flex their muscles and attacked police with pistols, assault rifles and firebombs.
"The outbreak was spontaneous," an intelligence source said. "After the second night, when it began to spread, the Al Zarqawi leadership decided to exploit this."
Insert Master of the Obvious pic hire.
French police were largely helpless. Anti-riot squads had been trained to handle left-wing anti-war demonstrators or individual terrorists, not organized squadrons of Muslim fighters with light weapons. Intercepting communications meant nothing, as police officers could not understand Arabic, particularly the code used by the Islamic insurgents.
Over the past 20 years, France has allowed the establishment of a separate Muslim state. In the 1980s, the European Union and Arab League signed a series of accords guaranteeing that Muslim immigrants in Europe would not be compelled in any way to adapt "to the customs of the host countries." In 1983, the Euro-Arab Dialogue issued a recommendation that non-Muslim Europeans be made "more aware of the cultural background of migrants, by promoting cultural activities of the immigrant communities or 'supplying adequate information on the culture of the migrant communities in the school curricula.'"
That sealed any hope of Arab assimilation in France and other European Union countries. Many Arabs stopped learning French and took second and third wives, following Muslim customs and ignoring French law. Arab women were treated by their husbands and fathers with the same brutality they have known well in Algeria and Tunisia. French police refused to intervene.
At the same time, Arab children â virtually all of them Muslims â were taught to hate France, Christians, Jews and the West. They were taught that they would lead the Muslim crusade that would destroy Christian Europe once and for all.
"There are three forms of jihad: the military jihad, the economic jihad and the cultural jihad," said Geneva-based historian Bat Ye'or, author of "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis."
"The EAD [Euro-Arab Dialogue] between the European Union and the Arab League has been a means of spreading the economic and cultural jihads from the Middle East to Europe," Ye'or said.
France was most enthusiastic in selling its future for Arab oil. In 1967, French President Charles De Gaulle announced that France would support the Arabs and boycott Israel. De Gaulle sold weapons to the worst of Arab depots, such as Libya's Moammar Khaddafy and Iraq's Ba'athist regime.
The Arab League didn't pull any punches in its dialogue with France and the EU. The Arabs demanded political concessions on a range of issues in exchange for oil. The EU, alarmed by the 1973 oil embargo, agreed and Arabs in Europe were given unofficial autonomy.
Another stirling example of the success of the Appeasement Strategyâ¢.
"Eurabia's destiny was sealed when it decided, willingly, to become a covert partner with the Arab global jihad against America and Israel," Ye'or said.
Over the past decade, supporters of Al Qaida have gradually replaced Muslim leaders in France and other countries. These pro-Al Qaida activists were trained in Saudi Arabia and have been aligned with Muslim veterans of the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Unlike their parents, who saw France and Europe largely as economic havens, the new Muslim activists were jihad-oriented and envisioned a takeover of a barren Christian Europe.
Part of the Turn Europe into an Ecomomic and Cultural Desert Programâ¢.
"We do not want to assimilate," said Brussels-based Arab European League founder Dyab Abu Jahjah. "Assimilation is cultural rape. It means renouncing your identity, becoming like the others."
There you have the gist of it, in black and white.
Instead, the pro-Al Qaida Muslim activists in France adopted jihad. In the 1990s, hundreds of French Muslims flocked to Bosnia to participate in the civil war in Yugoslavia. They returned after several years as hardened fighters ready to lead the Muslim masses in jihad. With the help of the new Saudi-financed mosques, they began to indoctrinate and train Muslim teenagers in holy war and combat, guerrilla warfare and even bomb assembly.
We in the US need to remember that 80% of mosques in the US are financed by the Saudis, and don't forget outreach stuff in US prisons.
In France, the Muslims grew rapidly, constituting more than 10 percent of the country's population. More telling, however, is government statistics that show that Muslims make up more than 30 percent of French youngsters, including in the universities. As Muslims see it, they are the future of France.
They probably are, with a 30% constituancy, and a lot more of a tighter group than French youths.
The pro-Al Qaida factions began to organize neighborhoods into popular committees similar to those in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the late 1980s. Youngsters were trained to spot non-Muslims, particularly police, and drive them out of the neighborhood. Muslims who showed a pro-French bent or opposed Al Qaida philosophy were beaten, expelled and even killed.
Muslim leaders formed links with their counterparts throughout Europe. In conferences over the past few years, French Muslims led the call for a jihad in Europe. Authorities ignored them.
In 2003, a new process began in France's Muslim neighborhoods. Recruitment began for Muslims to fight the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. This wasn't a war against Serbian weekend warriors; it was a chance to fight the Satan himself.
As a result, young French Muslims flocked to mosques to find out how to join the war in Iraq. Thousands either joined the Muslim war in Iraq, helped finance the Al Qaida insurgency, or established cells loyal to Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi, the Palestinian head of Al Qaida in Iraq.
The Al Zarqawi operatives were ready for battle both in France as well as in Iraq. They collected weapons, learned how to make bombs and smuggled missiles into Europe.
Western intelligence sources said Al Zarqawi operatives in France have acquired the SA-18 anti-aircraft missile from the former Soviet Union. The sources said the missiles were smuggled into Turkey and acquired by Al Qaida-aligned cells in the Middle East.
In 2004, intelligence sources said, France foiled a plot to destroy passenger jets with the SA-18 Igla missile. An Al Qaida-aligned cell composed of Algerian and French nationals planned to shoot the missiles from near Strasbourg.
Remind me not to book a flight to Strasbourg.
"This new generation of jihadists presents a major challenge for international intelligence services and law enforcement authorities since many are very young and virtually unknown, highly clandestine, evasive, many with no past criminal history or record, and fully committed to its cause," said Marco Vicenzino, executive director of the Washington-based Global Strategy Project.
This is not a law enforcement issue, Marco. This is an assault on the very fabric of a nation, like it's war, man.
What makes the situation even worse is that France has become essentially leaderless. President Jacques Chirac is ill and not fully functioning. Those seeking to succeed him in 2007 elections include Sarkozy and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
Who is rumored to be a man, but is still uninformed speculation to date.
The central government has pledged housing, education and employment in an effort to stop the Muslim violence. De Villepin also announced plans to deploy an additional 1,500 police officers to impose order.
But the Al Qaida network in France has no plans to fold up. Instead, emissaries from the network, many of them French converts from Christianity, have been moving to other EU states, including Britain, to plan similar campaigns.
The War for the soul of Europe has begun. This is no joke.
"Americans must discuss the tragic development of Eurabia, and its profound implications for the United States," Ye'or said.
"Americans should know that this self-destructive calamity did not just happen, rather it was the result of deliberate policies, executed and monitored by ostensibly responsible people. Finally, Americans should understand that Eurabia's contemporary anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism are the spiritual heirs of 1930s Nazism and anti-Semitism, triumphally resurgent," she said.
We can make our snarky comments about France and the fix they are in, but this whole chain of events in Frankistan is frightening. Right, Congresswoman Pelosi? Are YOU watching and listening? We could be dealing with these type of events in the US, too, if we keep going off the LLL deep end. |
French anti-terror judges Friday placed 11 suspected Islamic extremists under investigation for allegedly financing terrorism, part of a probe into a group suspected of using robberies to fund its plots.
France will impose curfews under a state-of-emergency law and call up police reservists to stop rioting that has spread out of Paris' suburbs and into nearly 300 cities and towns across the country, the prime minister said Monday, calling a return to order "our No. 1 responsibility."