France and the Epidemy of Jihadists’’

Maysaa Ibrahim

France is today moving along two lines. On one side, it is carrying on its role as a spearhead against Syria and the Syrian regime and, on the other, it is mobilizing all its energies to shirk the peril of what it calls the "jihadists".

On the first line, France stood against a draft resolution on referring Syrian to the International Criminal Court; and on the second line, not only did France chase the French recruitment rings to fight within terrorist groups in Syria, but it also interfered in the education and formation of individuals and the detection of any behavioral changes, in addition to strict Internet and social media monitoring.

On both courses, France will not seemingly succeed. Its last bid at the Security Council was as expected vetoed by both China and Russia; and away from the meeting's results, Paris movement in that way was explained as aimed to distort the presidential due date in Syria amid the failure to "digest" the victory of Bashar Assad of a new term. Otherwise, how to explain ignoring al-Nusra Front and other terrorist groups at the international instances while they have started to constitute, with foreign fighters along their ranks, the major concern of the western governments, including the French one?

France: duplicity and favoritism

French-Lebanese author René Nabaa speaks of a "sinuous" policy the French Foreign Ministry had adopted, in the person of Minister Laurent Fabius, who finds it easy favoring "terrorists." Fabius has recently met Abdul Hakim Belhadj for likely political arrangements in Libya at a time when the latter remained wanted by the NATO for ten years within the context of the "war on terrorism." Nabaa uses another example of this policy, relating that during the release of the French hostages abducted for almost a year by gunmen in Syria, Fabius preferred to focus in his speech on promoting for the chlorine gas usage hypothesis during the ongoing battles in Syria with no mention whatsoever of the kidnappers' callous act.

Albeit France dissociates itself from mobilizing against these terrorist groups in Syria through the international instances, it seems quite active to brush their danger off its borders by keeping a tab on the French and western gunmen who have joined them.

A governmental plan...but!

What's being broached in France today is a governmental plan that was approved last month and devised by the new Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. The plan is part of a strategy that is based on an intelligence work in addition to observation and prevention from "radical Islam." It is formed of four parts"

1 - Setting a new law that allows banning Jihadists, whether young or old, from leaving the French territories. This law entitles parents and families to ask the security authorities to ban their under-aged sons and daughters from leaving France in case there are indicators on jihadist inclination among them.

2 - Concerting war on "cells with jihadist aspects," expelling those involved in them, and seizing the properties of institutions or associations involved in those acts. Accordingly, the French government is seeking to tighten control of the Internet network considering the role it plays in recruiting foreign fighters, especially teenagers.

3 - International cooperation between Paris and other states that share the same concerns or states whose soil is used to transfer foreign fighters into Syria.

4 - Helping families who find themselves incapable of facing the deviation of their sons, through the opening of a national office for listening and orientation, devoted to assist those families and help rehabilitate and re-integrate individuals suspected of jihadists inclination and tendencies in the society.

According to Nabaa, the efficiency of this plan against the jihadists on the internal level will be relative; on one hand, Paris will find itself in an embarrassing and instable situation towards jihadists who are theoretically its allies, while, on the other, the motives behind the participation of foreign fighters alongside armed groups in Syrian appear.

The French official propaganda did encourage fighting the Syrian regime; For three years, the West has led the public opinion as it wanted without mentioning the influx of jihadists [into Syria], because what was sought was to win the war regardless of the means. In addition, there is the strong frustration resulting from the stiff daily life condition in a country that is saddled by an economic hardship and where the Islamophobia has remarkably raged on, which increased the urge to fight in Syria.

This is what France has sowed and this is what it had reaped, says Nabaa. Trying to get out of this crisis won't be easy, but France will keep trying. It shall try between June 9 and 20, when the French government will be holding a series of seminars with anti-terrorism specialists and associations special to children rights and extremist groups lecturing relatedly.

This will be France's chance not just to veer the attention off the re-election of Bashar al-Assad again as the president of Syria; what the French government is facing today is not just the risk of the jihadists but also the corruption of the political class, with so many examples to back up the charges.

Therefore, what the French government is looking for is to polish its image and restitute the trust of its citizens on the internal level, besides some vanished glories that it is still after outside its borders.