Acum doua zile, 120 de primari francezi au semnat o declaratie comuna, avertizand guvernantii ca in urma atacurilor situatia din suburbii a ajuns exploziva si ca trebuiesc luate urgent masuri corective de ordin economic, social si educativ.
Toti cei trei asasini, aminteste NYT, au venit din aceste suburbii sarace, au avut locuri de munca temporare, nereusind sa se integreze in ‘cealalta Franta”. 50% din locuitorii acestor adevarare ghetto-uri nu au diplome de bacalaureat, raidurile politienesti sunt frecvente si perspectivele economice ale tinerilor sunt dintre cele mai sumbre. Oamenii din suburbii nu vad nicio solutie la gravele probleme cu care se confrunta si se asteapta in schimb la represiuni din partea fortelor de ordine :
Crisis in France Is Seen as Sign of Chronic Ills
VAULX-EN-VELIN, France — France may have just hosted its biggest outpouring of solidarity since the end of World War II in response to the terrorist attacks last week in and around Paris that left 17 dead at thesatirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
But in the disaffected suburbs, or banlieues, that ring France’s largest cities, those appeals for unity hardly penetrated the sense of isolation, even siege, that has left cities like this one living a parallel existence from the rest of the country.
“I am French, and I feel French,” said Nabil Souidi, 23. “But here you are forbidden to say, ‘I am Charlie,’ ” referring to the rallying cry of solidarity since the attack on the magazine.
Mr. Souidi recently graduated from a trade school and hoped to find a job as a mechanic. Months later, he is still out of work, searching for a Plan B. “I’ll go to Syria,” he said, with a sarcastic laugh in an interview over a plate of French fries and mayonnaise.
In numerous interviews, community leaders and Muslims and North Africans who largely populate the banlieues expressed concern that last week’s attacks in Paris would intensify an already explosive social and economic situation in the places where they live.
On Tuesday, a French association that represents 120 mayors across France issued a statement warning that the banlieues were “on edge” amid the fallout from the attacks, and said there was an urgent need to address economic, social and educational shortfalls.
Vaulx-en-Velin, a dreary Muslim-majority suburb of Lyon, is France’s third-poorest city and representative of the problems. Many youths simply call it “a ghetto.” It might also be called the Other France.
Here, and in numerous other poor suburbs that ring French cities, joblessness runs around 20 percent, about double the national average. For young people, it can be as high as 40 percent. About half of residents do not have a high school diploma. Police harassment and profiling are taken for granted as the rule.
In a time of budget cuts and austerity, conditions have only deteriorated despite years of pledges by successive governments, including President François Hollande’s, to improve schools and create opportunity.
The men who carried out the attacks — Saïd Kouachi and his brother Chérif, and Amedy Coulibaly, who seized the kosher market — grew up in the French banlieues and had failed to hold down a series of menial jobs in their youth.
All were attracted to Islamic extremism by their teenage years, and many residents in the banlieues consider them bad seeds who were propelled toward the fringe.
Yet the fallout from their attacks, and the response shown by the rest of France, has been Topic A along the gritty streets of many impoverished suburbs from Paris down through the south of France.
Many worried that as Muslims, they would be lumped together with the killers. Others spoke of fears of retaliation against mosques and other Muslim symbols, as well as the specter of reprisals or even a crackdown by the police after officers were murdered in the terrorist attacks.
“People feel like there is no solution — that they are just totally divided from the rest of society,” said Gounedi Traore, 37, a social worker at the Centre Social Intercommunal de la Dhuys, a community center in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb outside of Paris that is one of France’s most economically deprived. “After what happened with Charlie Hebdo, I feel that this is going to set off a war.”
Nearly everyone agreed that the fallout from the Charlie Hebdo attacks, including a heightened security response by France and its allies, was a distraction from a larger problem: a sense of increasing social and economic marginalization that many cited as a root cause of young people drifting toward extremism.
“The attacks had a global impact but not local impact,” said Faouzi Hamdi, rector of the Okba Ibn Nafee Mosque in Vaulx-en-Velin.
Community leaders say France’s drawn-out economic crisis has made already scarce job opportunities even worse.
“We are not treating the problem at its roots,” said Leila Legmara, a deputy mayor for education in the Paris suburb of Colombes. “Of course we need more security and resources to fight terrorism. But we also need to address what it is within our society that is capable of producing monsters.”
