Dark Side of the City of Lights

CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France, Nov. 7, 2005 — -- In his sparkling white galabayya, the long flowing robe favored by North African men, and an ornately embroidered green cap perched jauntily on his head, Coulibaly Djogou looks the picture of imperturbable poise.

But the 47-year-old father of three is far from serene. "I'm scared," says the former social worker, making a sweeping gesture toward the bleak urban landscape around him. "I'm scared for my children, I'm scared for my property, I'm scared for me."

As if to prove his point, an enormous city truck stacked with burned-out cars pulls up behind him. With a gentle whirring, a gigantic metallic arm emerges from the truck and pulls up another singed car carcass parked on the street.

Nobody seems to notice the cleanup operation. Mothers and grandmothers, many of them veiled, go by with the evening's shopping. The neighborhood kids in track suits and sneakers hang around the street corners and fathers watch their little ones romp around the barren public compounds unperturbed.

This is Clichy-sous-Bois, a bleak suburb north of Paris. It's been Djogou's home for the past 21 years, since he left his native Mali for France. Clichy, as it is popularly known, is about 15 miles from downtown Paris, off the "peripherique" freeway that rings the city.

But Clichy-sous-Bois is a world away from Paris, the magnificent "City of Lights" of the tour guides. It's one of the bleak banlieues -- or suburbs -- around the French capital that few Parisians enter, or even want to enter. It's often called one of the "lost territories of the Republic," that an alarmingly high percentage of Parisians complain are inhabited -- even infested -- with hoodlums.

This, after all, is Paris, the romantic capital of the world, the bon vivant of European cities. Every night, the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de la Concorde that frame the magnificent Champs-Elysees are lit up in a glorious pageant of architectural splendor. For 10 minutes on the hour after dusk the Eiffel Tower winks, glitters and glows in a spectacular display of illumination guaranteed to steal a visitor's breath away.

But in the northern banlieues, a very different sort of illumination has been lighting up the night skies.

For more than 10 consecutive nights, angry youths have been torching cars, buses, retail stores, showrooms, schools and police stations across the city's banlieues. Against the angry orange flames of discontent, the flashing lights of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances provide a blue strobe flicker of a state infrastructure shocked, almost paralyzed, by this display of urban wrath.

The troubles began in Clichy-sous-Bois on the night of Oct. 27, when two French youth of North African descent were accidentally electrocuted at an electricity sub-station. The families of Zyed Benna, a 17-year-old resident of Tunisian descent, and Bouna Traore, a 15-year-old student of Malian descent, say the teens were fleeing the police. French authorities, however, deny the claim and an official inquiry is currently under way.Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, Djogou, like most residents of Clichy-sous-Bois, believe the boys were chased by the police. It's the characteristic lack of trust between banlieue residents and law enforcement officials that added fuel to the flames of widespread discontent.

As rumors of a police tear gas attack on a Clichy mosque made the rounds, the riots spread to neighboring and far-flung Paris suburbs as well as other French cities such as Nice, Lille, Marseille and Toulouse. By Saturday night, the unrest had reached Paris, when several cars were torched in the 17th district.

The toll is staggering: more than 4,300 vehicles have been burned, about 1,000 people arrested and 34 police officers injured, according to French Interior Ministry figures.

Stunned, the state machinery, the media, politicians and pundits struggled to understand this senseless destructive violence.

But Marilou Jampolsky, a spokeswoman for the Paris-based pressure group SOS Racisme, says she isn't stunned by the recent mayhem. "I'm not surprised," she says the morning after French police said rioters in the suburb of La Courneuve fired live bullets at them.

"I'm horrified of course," she adds. "But I'm not surprised. There's been a high level of tension in the banlieues. SOS Racisme has warned the government about this a lot of times, but no one pays attention."

Indeed, the French shock over the recent banlieue burnings is surprising. Experts, community activists and immigration rights advocates -- of which there are plenty in France -- have been warning that the French Republic is failing its poor, mainly Muslim immigrants of North African descent at the risk of grave social upheaval.

By most accounts, the current violence is a manifestation of the inherent problems facing France's dearly held and passionately defended integration policy.

Racial discrimination is banned in France. But in practice, it's widespread across the nation.Accurate discrimination figures are hard to come by in France since ethnic origins of employees, residential societies, even hate crime complainants cannot be recorded under French law. The estimated figures that do exist, however, are desultory.

While the overall unemployment rate for French university graduates for instance is 5.0 percent, the unemployment rate for "North African" university graduates is a whopping 26.5 percent.

According to CIA estimates, Muslims constitute between 5 percent and 10 percent of France's 60 million people. Yet all the members of parliament from mainland France are white.

France has innumerable governmental and nongovernmental organizations working on racial integration and immigrant rights issues. And yet, a subliminal, pervasive racism is apparent in the streets, upscale cafes, restaurants, housing blocks and business enterprises across Paris.