Counterterrorism Blog

The Investigative Project's Lorenzo Vidino is the author of the book, "Al-Qaeda in Europe: The New Battleground of International Jihad," to be released next week, with a foreword by Steven Emerson. Media reports, French officials (French story), and our experts are debating the role played by Islamic fundamentalism in the riots plaguing various French cities over the last two weeks. Investigations will reveal whether some fundamentalists have fomented the riots or just hijacked them to further their own agenda. What is crystal clear is that the French suburbs are the ideal environment for the spread of various violent movements and ideologies. Lorenzo's book includes the story of the 1995 race riots that plagued the French suburbs after the death of an Algerian-born terrorist. An excerpt from the book (with permission):

"....Particularly telling is the story of Khaled Kelkal. Born in Algeria in 1971, at age 2 Kelkal came to France with his family, as part of a wave of North Africans looking for menial jobs in the industries based in the country�s urban areas The Kelkals settled in a depressing slum at the doors of Lyon, France�s second-largest city. Vaulx-en-Velin was the quintessential French immigrant suburb: ugly, poor, and ridden with violence � and Kelkal grew up as its typical product."

(continued)
"When he was 19, he told Dietmar Loch that he �didn�t stay the course� in high school. �I had the ability to succeed, but I could not fit in because I told myself it would be impossible to become totally integrated. As for them, they had never seen an Arab in their class. I started to skip lessons. That is where the trouble started.� The German sociologist, who in 1992 interviewed young French Muslims for a study on immigration, could not have imagined that, three years later, one of his subjects would become France�s public enemy number one.

After leaving school, Kelkal became involved with petty crime. His largely Muslim neighborhood, as he described it to Loch, was dominated by anarchy, not the state�s law: �Here 70 percent of people are into stealing because their parents cannot afford to buy them things when there are six children. When you steal, you feel free. It�s a game, which either you win or lose.� In the mid-1990s, almost half of Vaulx-en-Velin was under 24 years old, vividly exemplifying the demographic revolution still sweeping Europe; 24 percent of those between 18 and 24 were unemployed.

Kelkal�s conduct soon landed him in prison. And, like many other young European Muslims, it was in prison that Kelkal changed his life, turning to radical Islam. Embracing the religion gave Kelkal, who had always felt out of place in French society, a sense of belonging to a big family, a group of trusted brothers. He told Loch: �I�m neither Arab nor French. I�m Muslim.�When I walk into a mosque, I�m at ease. They shake your hand, they treat you like an old friend. No suspicion, no prejudices.�When I see another Muslim in the street, he smiles, and we stop and talk. We recognize each other as brothers, even if we never met before.�

Kelkal, once released from jail, combined his newfound faith with his past as a hoodlum, recruiting a few of his childhood friends and creating a full-fledged terrorist cell. According to French authorities, in the spring of 1995 Kelkal met with Boualem Bensaid, a representative of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), a terrorist organization then battling the Algerian government in a bloody civil war. He was on a mission to recruit operatives to carry out attacks against France, as the GIA wanted to punish the French government for its support of the Algerian regime. Bensaid could not have found better candidates than Kelkal and his crew.

In the summer of 1995, the streets of France were bloodied by an unprecedented string of attacks. At the end of July, a bomb exploded in a Paris metro station, killing seven people. In the following weeks, other devices either blew up or were defused by French bomb experts throughout the country. On August 26, French investigators found Kelkal�s fingerprints on an unexploded device that had been placed along the tracks of the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse), the high-speed train that is the pride of France. The frantic manhunt that followed ended on September 29, when, before the cameras of French national television, French gendarmes killed Kelkal after a spectacular gunfight. The images shocked the French public, as policemen were heard shouting to each other �Finish him, finish him!� and were shown kicking Kelkal�s body to make sure he was dead.

Kelkal�s dramatic killing triggered riots in Vaulx-en-Velin, where hundreds of cars and trash cans were burned by groups of angry French Muslims. The riots quickly spread to the immigrant suburbs of other French cities, including Mulhouse, Strasbourg, and Paris. Elements of the country�s First Infantry Division had to be brought in to quell the protests. Such riots, which were not new to France, demonstrate the social and racial tensions afflicting the country. In his interview with Loch, Kelkal himself had commented on the race riots that erupted in Vaulx-en-Velin in 1990: �This is just the beginning. It�s going to heat up, and then it will be too late.�

Clearly, Kelkal had become some kind of folk hero for the disillusioned young Muslims of the suburbs. Some young Muslim men were reportedly aware of Kelkal�s activities but did not report them to the police. Their sense of anger toward French society made them sympathize with a man who was, in his brutal way, fighting the system. According to a French intelligence report, radical Islam represents for some French Muslims �a vehicle of protest against�problems of access to employment and housing, discrimination of various sorts, the very negative image of Islam in public opinion.�"