Youths' poverty, despair fuel violent unrest in France

CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France -- Mahmoud Khabou, 20, the jobless son of Algerian immigrants, knows little of the world beyond the concrete housing projects that rise in bleak rows barely an hour's subway ride from the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and other grand monuments of Paris.

But he knows who his heroes are. ''Osama bin Laden and Rodney King," he said, referring to the Al Qaeda leader and the African-American whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police in 1991 spawned massive racial riots.

''One because he gives pride back to the Muslims," the young man asserted as he and a trio of friends stood near the charred ruins of a carpet shop. ''The other because he was just a poor man, a 'nobody man' of color, but he caused a great city to burn."

The fires this time are in France. Arson attacks, running battles with police, random gunfire, and looting over the past 10 nights have spread from this dingy Paris suburb to dozens of other predominantly Muslim slums, where religious fundamentalism competes with drug pushers for the attention of alienated youths.

In an alarming turn early today, police said the unrest had reached the French capital, with more than a dozen vehicles torched.

The spiraling violence and the inability of authorities to bring it under control have shaken France and stunned neighboring nations, many with restive Muslim populations of their own. An increasing worry is that the sparks might ignite similar unrest elsewhere on the continent.

''There are deep and dangerous fault lines in Europe," said Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Muslim Forum, an organization of Islamic groups in Britain. ''What is happening in France could trigger copycat reactions elsewhere in Europe. This is a real fear."

In an effort to restore order, French officials yesterday added more police to the thousands already on riot duty at flashpoints outside Paris and other centers. More than a thousand residents in one battered suburb, Aulnay-sous-Bois, joined in a peace march, holding aloft a sign declaring ''Non" to violence as they filed down a street past burned-out hulks of automobiles and smoldering shops.

But hit-and-run arsonists continued to strike. In Achères, west of Paris, a nursery school was torched. Fresh violence also hit far-flung corners of France, from Rouen in Normandy and Bordeaux in the southwest, to Strasbourg near the German border.

Still, the capital region was bearing the brunt, with police rapid response units whipsawing through traffic, their caterwauling sirens reverberating through a damp Parisian night.

Islamic leaders and social commentators acknowledge that most of the looters and arsonists are Muslims of Arabic or black African heritage. But they insist that root causes of the violence are economic, not religious -- even though the rioters often use slogans of radical fundamentalism.

Moghal stressed in an interview: ''The crisis comes from poverty and feelings of powerlessness among so many Muslims [in Europe]. The crisis is not caused by Islam, but by people who turn to dangerous ideas and desperate measures in their hopelessness."

France has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe, about 5 million, many of whom dwell in communities beset by high unemployment, savage crime, blighted housing, and bad schools.

Striking a more conciliatory tone after days of tough talk, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy acknowledged yesterday that Muslim grievances may be rooted in real social problems, but warned that violence has to cease.

''Once the crisis is over, everyone will have to understand there are a certain number of injustices in some neighborhoods," he said. ''We are trying to be firm and avoid any provocation. We have to avoid any risk of explosion."

Analysts said the situation may force the French government to acknowledge that grievances of the huge and growing Muslim underclass are festering in a society famously dedicated to ''liberte, egalite, fraternite."

Unemployment in Islamic communities is estimated to be at 30 percent, more than three times the national average. Islamic leaders and social analysts say that racial and religious discrimination are rampant. Jobs available to even French-born Muslims, they say, tend to be menial positions.

''These people in these places, they feel they are not treated as full citizens or even as full human beings," said Ahmed El Keiy, a commentator with a French radio station BEUR-FM. ''When you have desperate poverty, you have anger. And when anger reaches a point, you have explosions."

Critics of French policies have few hard numbers to support claims of racism because the government does not keep the kind of social statistics that are routine in other nations.

France's official line is that equality is so intrinsic to the national ethos that it would be wrong to track the economic situation of individual ethnic groups. The government closely monitors educational levels among the population as a whole, for example, but refuses to study performance along racial or religious lines.

''The state is blind to minority groups, saying they can't exist in a society where everybody is equal," said Sebastian Roche, a political scientist. ''So rage builds. It is poverty and discrimination that turns them toward Islamic [fundamentalism]."

In France, about 70 percent of immigrants and their second- and third-generation offspring are Arabs from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia; recent years have also seen influxes of black Africans from former French colonies even farther south.

One significant change, is that until a decade or so ago, immigrants proudly referred to themselves as ''French Arabs," ''French Algerians," ''French Moroccans," and so on. Today, in a sign of alienation, they typically call themselves ''Muslims," taking religion, often the radical brand, as their strongest identity.

This is true elsewhere on the continent that once defined Christendom but that is now home to the largest population of Muslims outside the classic Islamic world.

Estimates vary, but somewhere between 15 million and 20 million Muslims make their homes in the 25 nations of the European Union. There are about 3 million Muslims in the United States.

But the Muslim face of Europe is largely invisible in the old capitals and picturesque cobble streets most visited by tourists. Throughout the continent, the majority of Muslims reside in densely populated extensions of urban centers that range from the merely anonymous -- immigrant neighborhoods in Germany, for example -- to the outright horrendous, such as the shantytowns outside Rome and other Italian cities where thousands of illegal immigrants, often Africans, are crammed into makeshift hovels lacking electricity and water.

''European countries have transferred their immigrant problems to the suburbs," said Marwan Abou-Tamm, a Lebanon-born specialist on issues of racial integration who was raised in France and now lives in Germany. ''People have been isolated in bad neighborhoods with poor schools and not many opportunities, with no one caring what they feel or what are their problems."

French officials, however, have mostly blamed the violence of recent days on drug dealers, street gangs, and -- in Interior Minster Sarkozy's controversial characterization -- ''scum."

The spate of fire bombings, street battles, sniper fire, and attacks on citizens, has caused dozens of injuries, but no deaths. Thousands of cars, hundreds of shops and scores of warehouses, as well as police stations, medical clinics, and a Jewish synagogue have been hit by firebombs. At least 30 French communities have suffered serious street violence.

In Clichy-sous-Bois, despair hangs as heavily in the air as the sour smell of smoke from gutted cars and torched businesses.

''People are under pressure, they feel the anger of no jobs and no chance to improve their lives until finally -- boom! -- it just explodes," said Abdel Rahman Bouhout, head of the Muslim Cultural Association in Clichy-sous-Bois.

The violence exploded in this suburb Oct. 27 after two teenagers -- Ziad Benna, 17, and his friend Bouna Traore, 15 -- were electrocuted in a power substation into which they clambered to evade police. Matters were made worse when police battling rioters fired tear gas into a local mosque where more than 700 people were gathered for prayers.

French newspapers have carried speculative reports that ''hidden hands" -- meaning Islamic radical groups such as Al Qaeda -- are orchestrating the violence. Inhabitants of Clichy-sous-Bois scoffed at the suggestion.

''There's no hidden hand -- very ridiculous! -- just the fully visible discrimination that Muslims face everyday," said Zoubidia, 29, as she nervously led her two small boys past cordons of riot police guarding a fire station. She declined to give her last name.

''Just allow us the dignity of good jobs and a chance to make better lives," she said. ''Then the French will have nothing to fear from 'dangerous Muslims.' "

Petra Krischok of the Globe's Berlin bureau contributed to this report.