On Thursday evening, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove for more than a mile through a crowd of people celebrating France’s independence day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, killing at least 84 and injuring more than 200. The Cipher Brief spoke with National Defense University’s Steven Kramer about France’s vulnerabilities to this kind of attack and the changing landscape of terrorism that makes it difficult to prevent all attacks. Kramer, who also served as the Policy Advisor to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, says his comments are purely his personal views and not a reflection of the U.S. government.
The Cipher Brief: What are the internal dynamics in France that make the country vulnerable to attacks like the one last Thursday?
Steven Kramer: It’s hard to answer that because we don’t have all of the facts yet. But I think what we probably had on Thursday was a single individual, who had a background of petty criminality, who had gotten into jihadism. How much of that reflects broader social, economic, and political considerations? It’s not obvious. If this guy was acting individually, which may be the case, and if he was one of those people who had a very quick, kind of instant conversion to jihadism, then it may well be that he had no record of extremism, of terrorism, or connections that would have made it known he would do something like this.
France has become a major target for international jihadism. One reason is that France is involved in the war against the Islamic State (also known as ISIL or ISIS). However, it’s not clear what role that played in this particular attack.
TCB: The attacker – Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel – was born in Tunisia and emigrated to France. How much does the history of integration amongst the immigrant community in France play into this?
SK: France is a country with an immigrant community of maybe four or five million people originating in North Africa and Turkey. Under the best of circumstances, a small minority of those people would be discontented and open to radicalization.
The real problem is that France hasn’t been that successful at fully integrating this immigrant community. It hasn’t been successful because of high levels of unemployment in the country as a whole, and even higher levels among the immigrants and especially young people who have just gotten out of school. There’s also a lot of geographical segregation, with many of the immigrants living in neighborhoods in the banlieue. Without international jihadism, the problem would be how can France integrate people into a national community? But with jihadism, the problem becomes something very different.
TCB: What is the French government doing to address this, maybe not directly, but – for example – with the economic reforms that the country has been trying to implement?
SK: The issue of economic reforms is an issue that goes back for a very long time. People have claimed for decades that the French economy is not competitive, that the laws connected to the labor market result in high levels of unemployment, that it’s very difficult to lay people off in a time of economic decline, and that the chronic high unemployment is a result of that inelastic labor market.
The attempt to change labor laws goes back over 20 years. It has been met by a lot of opposition from trade unions and also from the population, because they’re afraid of job insecurity. People who have jobs don’t want to take the risk of losing them. And young people often hope that eventually they will get a job that will give them tenure. The attempt by the current government to change the laws has been largely unsuccessful, because there wasn’t a majority in Parliament to pass all of the reforms. It’s an incredible problem – one of the major problems – in France today.
If France had no unemployment, that would eventually have an impact on the situation of immigrants. But it would take a long time, so you can’t solve the problem of terrorism by solving the problem of unemployment in the short term. The current government has been greatly weakened politically, but it’s not obvious that another government – a Conservative government – would be much more successful in economic reforms, because the right has also failed in the past.
TCB: Can you talk a little about intelligence sharing and internal security in France?
SK: I’m not an expert in this. All I can say is every time there’s a big terrorist attack, there’s always an accusation that if only the intelligence communities worked better within the country and between countries, then this kind of thing may not have taken place. There are some situations in which this may be true. But I think you have to take into account a very important fact: a lot of the terrorism that seems to be taking place now is not by people regularly involved in international jihadism. Rather, it’s these petty criminals who somehow very rapidly become radicalized, and who know enough and have weapons to kill a lot of people. It’s a sort of do-it-yourself terrorism. If that’s true – and I think that’s the direction ISIS has been going – then I don’t think changing the way the intelligence services work will make a huge difference, and that’s what’s really scary.
I think that France has a very good intelligence system and it has well-organized police. Whatever criticisms one can make, one must take into account that France does this kind of thing very well. The problem of dealing with terrorism is not the result of a fundamental defect in the French state, but rather it’s the inherent difficulty of dealing with this kind of problem, at a time when France has become the number one target of jihadists.
TCB: In light of that, how do you think France is going to respond? Hollande already said he’s going to bolster the anti-ISIS coalition. Will this help with domestic terrorism in France?
SK: The French and Americans are not going to take Mosul; it has to be the Iraqi army and other regional forces, who have conflicting interests. You don’t want to defeat ISIS and create a new power vacuum. I think it would be a great thing to eliminate ISIS on the ground, but that’s not going to answer the question of domestic terrorism. I think we have a long-term problem of chronic terrorism that’s going to be very difficult for societies to cope with.
In terms of France, you have a paradox. Recent studies show that in the year 2016, France has become more, rather than less, tolerant toward minorities. But politically, we’re seeing the rise of the right wing National Front in France. And we know – the polls show – that when the presidential election takes place next year, the person who will get the most votes will be National Front leader Marine Le Pen. She will likely come in first in the presidential election, then lose in the second round. That’s very scary. And terrorism like this only strengthens the position of right-wing extremists in France and in other countries.
You can see how this poses a very serious problem, because far-right extremism puts the immigrant population at risk, because these people will be blamed for the actions of a few crazy people. And of course, all that most French Muslims want is to be treated like everyone else. If you can make any sense of what ISIS is doing, it’s trying to polarize society – creating a crisis mode in which the Muslim population is very stigmatized. They must think that would help the ISIS cause. This is a grave threat to political democracy.
