JOURNAL: Guerre de Course

The open source conflict in France continues to rapidly evolve (as of Sunday night). Not only did it increased in scale (the torched car index reached 1408 cars on Sunday) it has also increased in scope (982 of those torched cars were outside Paris and Germany/Belgium reported their first incidents). The tactics of this new Blitzkrieg are also evolving. Higher value commercial targets are being torched and policemen are being engaged in wasting attacks -- incidents that engage and tie up forces. There are even signs that bazaar transactions are present: a commercial bomb factory, with 150 incendiaries on the "factory" floor, was found.

Here's some more brainstorming on this important question: Will the violence continue? Probably, despite indications that it has subsided. The open source war is moving under its own momentum now (the participants in Paris are likely just dead tired and the collective thinking of the community was to rest). This means that Prime Minister Villepin's attempt to extend an olive branch will not restore any measure of lasting calm. Nor will the extra police since the guerrillas will continue to evade their patrols and overwhelm them when they engage. The only solution, egged on by many, will be the broad use of the military to restore order.

The use of the military, when taken, will shut down the insurgency for now. However, the presence of troops in the banlieue will be a source of provocation that will continue to fuel future efforts. Mass arrests will only make things worse. During the period of military enforced calm, France's open source guerrillas will radically improve their methods. The next time violence emerges, it won't be just cars that are torched. It will be the very infrastructure that France relies upon for modern life (via swarms much like we see today and new methods of cascading network failures). Given the efficacy of these techniques, the economic pain of this future conflict will be many times worse than the current one and will be shared by all of Europe. This conflict's long term impact on the future of French prosperity is hard to measure at this time, but it certainly is going to be severe.

Finally, I suspect that at some point during this future conflict, France will come to rely upon empowered, local Islamic militias to maintain order in the banlieue. However, the ceding of authority to those militias will be exactly the type of autonomy that this was about in the first place. France will have fragmented.

Comments

[James Acres]

John, I think you're right that we're more likely to see a ceasefire than a peace in the near-term. But I'm not convinced that we'll see France ceding control to some sort of "millet" system.

When have we seen Europe take such a course? Europe generally, and France specifically, has a long history of violence against troublesome ethno-religious minorities.

Let's say the banlieux produce violence that truly shakes the French economy. Why doesn't history lead us to expect concentration camps and deportations instead of compromise? Which is of course not to say that I condone such action . . . simply that this seems to be a more historical response.

Remember how many votes Le Pen got BEFORE economy threatening violence took place? I'm not particularily excited to see how many followers he'll have once such violence takes place.

[Ken]

I have a horrible feeling that you may be correct with this one. I don't see a campaign of extermination being waged - it's just not politically possible. It would divide France and see the rest of Europe and North Africa combined against her.

I gave a summary of your points on my own blog and concluded my posting thus:

"John Robb does not state this, but it is standard guerrilla practise to try and create bases from which the guerrillas can then expand into other areas. However, in this case, that is unlikely to happen. If any Arab so much as stepped out of his autonomous area I suspect that the French would be fighting each other to get at him. In other words, any such autonomous zones that are set up would be a blind alley going nowhere. They would be worse that the old South African bantustans because the denizens of those areas would be prevented from leaving - and I doubt if anyone would be all that interested in supplying them with life's necessities. Want to have another riot? Fine, it's an autonomous zone: you pay for the reconstruction."

That strikes me as a more likely alternative. It is still horrible though.

[Marcello]

Would it be geographically possible to enclose those areas into de facto concentration camps?
If yes that seems a possible answer to me.

[StrategyUnit]

John,

I think we must note that the common tactics of curfews and mass deployment of the Gendarmerie has not happened until just recently.This should of been by day 2-3.

The time for curfew and deployment is longer than Katrina - that's unacceptable.

The Wretched at Belmont shows that this riot could of possible been nipped before further escalation:
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/11/trends.html

As for mass arrest - I am unsure of the legal specifics, but I am sure the French could hold the youths for a lengthy time without a formal trial. This should be effective as there are only a finite supply of male youths for these riots.

I fully understand your analysis, but the "network" so to speak, doesnt appear to be very fully developed so I think there is plenty of hope for France to place this under control. (Althought admittedly, we dont have much information on what is going on on the ground.)

We'll going to see what happens in the coming days. Let's hope the French act appropriately.

[Marcello]

"The next time violence emerges, it won't be just cars that are torched. It will be the very infrastructure that France relies upon for modern life".

I already said similar things before, and I
will say them again.Torching cars and beating to death some unlucky bystander is the sort of thing you can "get away with", because as it has already been noted the side effects of a really brutal repression would be far worse.But if France is threatened with sustained and effective attacks to the national economy...well they will find themselves as an hated minority surrounded by an hostile population in a state which commands non trivial amounts of firepower.If the french State is pushed to the wall concentration camps and deportations should not be impossible to organize.
The price paid for this will be high (moral,international standing etc ) but if it is inferior to having the national economy being bled to death...

[Kevin de Bruxelles]

Insurgencies – on their home turf -- can defeat a Great Power but it is extremely rare for an insurgency to do well against their own local government.

France only has 9000 gendarmes to try to enforce curfews tonight and of course it will be a spectacular failure. The military will need to be called in. If they are smart, the military units will ignore the rioters and instead jump deep behind enemy lines – a la Sharon in Egypt in 1973 – and arrest as much of the criminal hierarchy as [possible in specific cités. The criminal leaders in other banlieues will call off the riots in an attempt to avoid military intervention in their areas. The military units will need to occupy these zones for a year or two, during which time they must engage in “cité building”, which would include upgrading buildings and landscaping, transfer of ownership to residence who behave themselves. Intensive improvements to the education services and job placement / creation will be needed. The ultimate goal should be to improve these areas enough so that average French people will want to live there, in other words a type of gentrification will need to happen in order to break up the concentration of people living in difficulty.

[geoffrey delcroix]

Well, hello everybody. I'm a long time silent reader of this interesting blog and, in fact, I'm French, so I think that today I should stop being silent. You, John, and several commenting people are saying some really interesting things about what is happening in the french "banlieues". But I think some comments are really not plausible in France. I'm not sure talking of concentration camp or occupying zones, or talking of autonomous zones like in South Africa is a good idea... In fact, it's true that for the moment, nobody has a good answer to what is happening. But for the moment, it's not a war, even if your model fits well with all this. It's more a social unrest using guerilla and "open-source" methods. The fact is that there are no leaders and no "program" except burning their own cars (the cars of their neighbours, at least). you can't just go there and say "arrest the leaders".
You have 15 years old boys in front of you !
So, for me, this sentence of your note :
"Nor will the extra police since the guerrillas will continue to evade their patrols and overwhelm them when they engage. The only solution, egged on by many, will be the broad use of the military to restore order."
is wrong. For the moment, it won't be a good solution to use our army for that, or just to back Police and Gendarmerie (Banlieues are more in Police zones, but some gendarmes are deployed there right know), not in a broad way.
If you have some precise question, I will be happy to answer them.
Sorry for my english ;-)

[Marcello]

The concentration camps thing is if the riots morph towards the sort of systemic sabotage which has been analyzed here.The effects could be devastating and requiring extreme measures.Until then nothing more than what is being done now can realistically be done.
Shooting 15 years old would indeed backfire spectacularly.

[John Robb]

Goeffrey (and everyone else), thanks for the input/feedback. I don't think it will be a good solution to use the army either, but good solutions often require time to work. In a rework of Rumsfeld's phrase, "you fight open source war with the society you have, not the one you would like to have." The good solutions we would like to select aren't possible because they are contingent on investments/efforts that didn't happen before the conflict began.

[jon]

The only way that the army could be used in this situation is as a cordon once a curfew has gone into effect.

The troops that should be used would be the French equivilant of the US National Guard, especially the military police component.

These troops should be there only to provide the "big stick". The regular police should be the ones actually in charge of the cordon, with the military providing backup as requested by the onsite policeman. The Gendarmes should be the ones to actually go into these neighborhoods to try to put down some of the violence.

[geoffrey delcroix]

--> John : "you fight open source war with the society you have, not the one you would like to have."
Excellent analysis...

Did you notice that French Government decided yesterday to use a 1955 law to impose curfew? Everybody here is talking of "état d'urgence" (something like your "state of emergency"). That's strange to see that we are using a 50 years old law in that situation. As a public policies analyst, I have to say that I'm not sure that this law will be efficient : it was tailored to fight a military coup or something like a communist revolution ! We will see in the next days if this law is able to give the right tools to the law enforcment authorities (mainly our "Préfet" in this case).
One more things : the young "rioters" are using modern system of communications : cell phones, SMS systems and... blogs! There is a very popular among "banlieusards" blog service owned by a rap music radio ("skyblogs")and the skyblogs are used like a small propaganda tool. Even if the riots are not organized, there is some form of grassroot networks emerging...

[SteveL]

Geoffrey, thanks for the skyblogs info and offer to share info from your location on the ground.

Do you see any connection between the UN investigation into the assasination of PM Hariri and what is happening?

The use of blog's and web-pages have certainly simplified and focused sharing tactics and procedures. I wonder if any Hizbullah 'trainers' are thought to be educating, organizing and or equipping the young 'guerrilla's/rioters'?
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cuse/analysis/guitta20051103.pdf

What costs(Media coverage is free) do the rioters need to fund to conduct their 'operations'? Would hawalas be used to fund portions of this very decentralized 'operation'
?

Tabligh representatives are said to trying to interceed/gain credibility and settle things down, any thoughts? (Wall Street Journal )

[eeeekkkkkk]

Posted by: geoffrey delcroix | Tuesday, November 08, 2005 at 11:15 AM wrote
" it was tailored to fight a military coup or something like a communist revolution ! "

The state of emergency law mentioned by our french friend was tailored (unsuccessfuly as it turned out) to halt a popular anti-imperialist uprising in algeria. In other words in the early stages of a conflict that on french soil led to hundreds of dead algerians being shoved into the Seine river.

Locals also have been quopted in numerous outlets pointing out that a good 30 per cent of the rioters are white.

It's a protest against economic aparthied and a fascistic police force utilising largely traditional tactics of the desperate silenced underclass - burn your home area down.

That's the problem with the GWOT (tm usa). Even a wake up call from kids 15-22 becomes dragged into the global war on terror narrative. 2 kids are dead and one old man (an incident that may or may not have been linked to the rioting) and no cops.

This ain't iraq chaps. More like drag strip riots in the usa pre-beatles. Remember them? Way back then when the USA really were the good guys.

[John Robb]

Sure, this event didn't produce bodies. However, systems disruption is a strange beast. It doesn't produce blood or guts but can quickly gut an economy. For example: If these had been substations instead of cars, France would be shut down for business.

[jomama]

"France will have fragmented."

Ooooha.

The End of the Nation State is nigh.

[geoffrey delcroix]

eeekkkkkk is right, the 1955 law was made at the begining of Algeria war. And he is talking of the october 1961 events ("hundred of dead algerians being shoved in the Seine...") and this is not the nicest page of French history book.
It did not mean that the law is by itself an imperialist and fascist law, I think. But you're right on that point.
In fact, I agree with a lot of what you're saying, except that I have a problem with you're use of "apartheid" and "fascist" words!
SteveL : I really don't think there are links between what is happening and Jihadism and terrorism. I think John Robb is right when he analyses it as an example of guerilla and system disruption. It doesn't mean that Paris is Bagdad !
So, I don't think there is any link with Hariri case, or any use of Hawala. there is no need for money in these riots. You don't need money to throw stones on police ! You know, what's happening is more like the LA riots in the 80's, but with 2005 medias and technologies. It's not GWOT in Paris.
And finally, Moslims representatives in France have condemned the violence. One islamic organization has edicted a law ('fatwa') to say the riots are not permitted by Curan.

[John Robb]

Interesting. The BBC says the old law was never used before in mainland France. The law goes beyond a simple curfew. It includes warrantless searches of property and the ability to set up cordons that block movement (shut people into the banlieue for example).

[geoffrey delcroix]

Well, John, the BBC is right : this law was never used in mainland France. In 1955, it was used in (French at this time)Algeria and after that, last use of this law was in "nouvelle-caledonie".
curfew is only one of the element of the law
(http://medias.lemonde.fr/mmpub/edt/doc/20051108/707729_loidu3avril1955.pdf):
- the use of this law must be limited on a defined part of the territory.
- for 12 days, after that you need a law by parliament
special powers of public order authorities :
- curfew
- limitation of the movement in certains areas
- closing, if necessary, of places likes bars, meeting rooms, ...
- searches of property during the night (impossible in France otherwise), and by the way the american style warrant does not exist in France, we have another system I think. So I'm not sure you can say it's "warrantless". But you need a lawyer about that question...
- control of medias
Clearly, Government will not use the major part of the law (controlling the medias is not useful and not possible, for example)