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PARIS — The practiced smugness which many Parisians once treated American crime has produced a nasty sense of deja vu — newspapers speak of "Le Holdup American" as the latest news in which violent crime has become commonplace. A recent bank robbery and shootout in a Parisian suburb saw three killed and six wounded. The accused Habib Mezaoui, was well armed despite tough gun laws.
Insecurity and escalating high profile crime dominates the French agenda; violence in public areas jumped by 41 percent in the first half of the year; crime on the Paris Metro (subway) rose by 25 percent. These are not the legendary pickpockets nor catburglers, but a new breed of aggressive, violence-prone delinquents from the grim concrete-bound suburbs which ring the City of Light and other French towns. And though France is well policed, the problem can't be solved simply by a high profile presence.
The respected daily Le Figaro reports that 2,000 cell phones are snatched monthly in Paris from their users. Interestingly, ghetto gangs in the quaintly called banlieues use cellulars to track the police. Even the staid left leaning Le Monde now sports crime coverage and devotes many of its incisive cartoons to the subject.
While French President Jacques Chirac vows "Zero tolerance" for crime and delinquency, the fact remains that France reflects in many ways the disrespect for authority that plagued America in the 1960 and 1970's. A combination of failed social programs, alienation of immigrant youth, and a haughty sleaze among the political class, has produced an ingrained disrespect. French "rap music" seethes with anger as much as its American counterpart. Perhaps more dangerously, the climate has also provided a breeding ground for "fundamentalist" Islam among many of the disaffected Arab youth.
A decade ago when graffiti became ubiquitous in Paris, many people viewed it as an "expression of creativity." While the graffiti problem has considerably ebbed — though many suburban trains are still defaced beyond anything seen in New York in the 1970's — the culture of confrontation has grown. Autos are torched in the suburbs just for fun and concrete "ZUP" housing projects breed crime as much as their American counterparts.
Earlier this year the election of Bernard Delanoe, as the new Socialist Mayor of Paris (the logical byproduct of the sleaze of Chirac's hand picked City Hall appointees) has produced a deluge of public disrespect often dubbed as "tolerance" or "do your own thing." Once scrupulously maintained public lawns and gardens gracing the fabulous buildings and squares, once "interdit" to now are littered and crowded with loungers.
The homeless — not the legendary clochards — but a growing number of young and middle aged people, have become an obvious fact of life too despite the massive network of social welfare programs the city provides.
This is not for a moment to suggest that one really feels nervous in the city of Paris itself — yet even in the gracious Tulleries Gardens squads of black suited security police make themselves very obvious. But take a ride on the RER suburban trains, go to the northern belt of St. Denis, or see the ghetto of "Chicago" near the historic Chateaux town of Rambouillet and view a France not quite so la belle.
Indeed many of these problems have been stupidly imported into France, while at the same time many of the French intelligencia were smugly decrying "American gun culture" or now droning on about the death penalty in the U.S. Perhaps they should speak of the globailization of crime and social ills.
One of the many tragedies of the faceless concrete suburbs is that they embody a false solidarity of the French Republic — one which provides reasonable housing and opportunities which are juxtaposed with restrictive labor markets and regulations which stunt economic growth and opportunity. Social programs more often than not, don't promote creativity but deepen dependence and engender a false "Egalite." For many North Africans in the banlieues, the socialist dream has become a living nightmare; there is a brooding rage against the State.
The violence clouds next year's Presidential elections in which the incumbent Jacques Chirac,who started out as a conservative but became a compromiser, will face off Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin who started out as a Trotskyite and now poses as a moderate. France's insecurity provides a dramatic backdrop for the elections but shall haunt the Republic well after the vote.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
