Paris
(AFP)
One year after a jihadist attack wiped out most of its staff,
French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday published a
typically provocative special edition featuring a gun-toting God,
sparking protests from the Vatican.
The
cover of the anniversary edition features a bloodstained, bearded
God-figure in sandals with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder
under the headline: "One year on: the killer is still at large."
The
controversial cover is typical of the fiercely secular publication
whose drawings of the Prophet Mohammed drew the fury of Muslims
around the world and inspired the bloody attack on its offices on
January 7 last year.
Jihadist
brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi gunned down eight Charlie staff as
well as several others in and around the building in the assault,
which began three days of terror in the French capital that would
eventually leave 17 dead.
A
year
after the terrorist attack on
the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the mood in
France is a mixture of resilience, uncertainty and growing internal
division.
The
murder of 12 people at the magazine and four people at a Jewish
supermarket two days later presaged the slaughter carried out
in Paris
on November 13 by
terrorists claiming allegiance to the militant Islamists of Isis. The
sense of threat lingers, with heavily armed soldiers and police
patrolling the streets of the capital and other big cities.
France is
at war and must be prepared for the possibility, if not probability,
of further attacks, as President François Hollande warned in his
traditional New Year address.
Yet the terrorists have failed. If resistance means going to cafés, bars and restaurants and attending concerts, after a week or so of disarray, then life goes on, albeit with fewer Japanese and Americans tourists. The French have chosen to live as though they are not potential targets of further attacks.
If
the goal of the terrorists was to divide the French people and to
encourage support for the far-right National Front while pushing the
large Muslim minority into the arms of radical fundamentalists, they
failed in that too. Whatever the impressive gains made by the FN in
last month’s regional elections, Marine Le Pen will not be the next
president of France.
Polls
show strong support for military action in the Middle East and the
Sahel, and indeed many voters are proud of their country’s renewed
international clout. They are persuaded by Mr Hollande’s assertion
that the fight against terrorism cannot be won on the home front
alone.
Despite
this resilience, some difficult questions remain to be answered. Were
the murdered journalists provided with sufficient protection, given
the number of threats made against them?
Why
were the intelligence services taken by surprise in January and again
in November? Is the French state strong enough to confront the threat
of terrorism effectively now that it appears to be one of the
principal targets
of Isis in
Europe?
A
strong state is not one that violates its fundamental values in the
name of security. The country that invented human rights cannot be
seen to flout the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — a
document that it helped to inspire.
A strong
state is not one that violates its fundamental values in the name of
security. The country that invented human rights cannot be seen to
flout the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — a document that
it helped to inspire
Yet,
with the government’s proposal to strip French citizenship from
dual nationals convicted of terrorist offences, France risks doing
just that.
This
step will not act as a deterrent against terrorism: anyone willing to
blow themselves up will care little about losing their French
passport. Worse, the plan evokes, however faintly, the measures taken
during the second world war by the Vichy regime against French
citizens of Jewish origin.
The
effectiveness of France’s interventionist foreign policy stance is
also unclear. It is doubtful that bombing Isis forces in Iraq and
Syria makes a real difference unless it is accompanied by the use of
competent regional forces on the ground.
Beneath
these uncertainties lie cultural and social fractures that run deep
in France and may have grown deeper in the past year. The slogan
proudly adopted by millions last January was “Je suis Charlie” —
but by no means everyone in France is Charlie. The cover of
the “anniversary”
issue of Charlie Hebdo,
published this week, which depicts God as an “assassin still at
large”, will do little to assuage those who believe the magazine to
be gratuitously offensive.
More
seriously, if France wants to continue to present itself to the world
as the country of liberty, equality and fraternity — and it should
probably add “security” if it is serious about protecting the
democratic nature of the French republic — those in charge have to
answer fundamental questions.
The
most important of these concerns the progress that the authorities
have made in trying to regain control of the republic’s lost
territories — the deprived suburbs of France’s biggest cities
where young people, enmeshed in crime, drugs and violence, have
become the foot soldiers of jihad.
In
order for France to remain resilient, it needs to offer a vision of
progress for all its citizens and not simply to react to attacks and
provocation in knee-jerk fashion.
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