Returning to the Gare de l’Est last night, right at the heart of Paris’ tenth arrondissement, the city seemed notably unchanged from when I left it a little over 72 hours earlier. The streets were not unusually busy for a Monday night, cafe windows were dotted with diners and drinkers, and the familiar Parisian melting-pot of people could be seen strolling up and down the rues and boulevards. Were it not for the military presence at metro stations and key tourist sites, you would have been forgiven for thinking that France’s worst post-war massacre had taken place elsewhere.
In the days that have followed the slaughter of 129 victims and the injuring of many more, horror has turned to mourning, and mourning to questioning. How did eight attackers slip under the radar? How did one terrorist apparently pass through Greece from Syria as a refugee? What does this mean for France?
For François Hollande, it means war. The president of the republic has reacted not just with the strongest possible discourse but with an immediate military response. France would be ‘merciless’, he told parliament at Versailles on Monday morning, a statement backed up by the series of 30 air strikes launched against Islamic State strongholds in the almost immediate aftermath of Friday’s attacks. As is being discussed across the channel in the United Kingdom, the debate rages about whether France is right to retaliate so forcefully and so directly, and whether kneejerk reactions are a trap into which the terrorist group wants to lure Western enemies. It is worth remembering that a number of Friday’s attackers appear to have been nurtured and radicalised in France or neighbouring Belgium.
Hollande has announced that the national state of emergency, the first declared in the country for over 50 years, will last for a minimum three months. Before the first of those months has expired, France will take to the ballot box for the municipal elections. Naturally in the wake of such events, the Front National will be seeking to capitalise, and with their leader Marine Le Pen having called for an immediate end to migration into France there are fears that many could be tempted by her intolerant and divisive rhetoric. With a country reeling, a boost to the Front National in December would only strain relations in a society which showed unity after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, and again now. What’s more, it would play right into the hands of groups like IS, who desperately long to prey on the disenfranchisement and ostracisation of muslims across Western Europe.
With liberté threatened, the French have returned to the streets in resilience. To counter extremism and show the solidarity feared by terrorists, égalité and fraternité must follow.
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Nick Jones lives in Paris. He tweets @NickMJones94
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