France's Emerging Realities and Crisis Management

Stark new realities have been confronting France with the emergence of jihadist-dedicated Islamists bringing the battle home. Those who have fought abroad returning and prepared to light the tinder to express the flame of militant Islam's raging ideology of hatred against the West, and those who have never left taking the opportunity to adopt the honour of martyrdom to exhibit their deep and abiding worship of the Islam that beckons them to jihad and slaughter.

These are citizens of France spurning the qualities that make France uniquely France, its universality of liberty, fraternity, equality in a religion-free environment assuming that all its people are equal to the occasion of enjoying the country's values-driven culture of personal achievement while respecting others among whom they live in a perpetual love-in of multicultural bliss. A shattered dream, alas, one that was never quite as luminous, obviously, as France considered it to be.

Even while struggling with the evils of ghettoization and unemployment, rampant crime and bigotry, where government rule couldn't extend into the banlieues of simmering resentment France found it difficult to admit the festering boil requiring lancing. But all of France's citizens were meant to be treated equally, with trust and affection in their status as Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, irrespective of origin. Respected for their having chosen France for their futures.

Except that clerics in France, as they do elsewhere, extol the lasting virtues within Islam of fending off the Crusaders and the Infidels. Like dogs which Islam considers haram, non-Muslims too are not to be trusted, and the faithful are exhorted to remain separate and apart lest their presence soil the purity of Islam; the values and customs of the kuffar are not those of the faithful of Islam.

Suddenly, the realization that not only do terrorists arise from within the banlieues to prowl and to target those who have committed grave offences against Islam, from French Jews whose crime is that they are not French Muslims, to editorialists, journalists and cartoonists whose crimes are legion against the Prophet Mohammad and Islamic honour. Now, add to that volatile reaction to the liberties and equalities and brotherhood of France, the brothers taught within the military to excel.

Former members of the French military joining jihadists in Syria and Iraq, how very quaint. But then, a new series of anti-terrorism measures will attend to all of that, won't they? Former paratroopers, French foreign legionnaires, fighting for Islamic State, just imagine...! Among them a one-time member of the country's elite First Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment, reputed to represent Europe's most experienced special forces units.

Of North African origin, one ISIS recruit has been well versed in commando training in combat, shooting and survival techniques; all of which should come in downright handy in Syria and Iraq. The French-born Islamists now in Syria all received combat training, some were explosive experts, some were Muslim converts, others radicalized from an "Arab-Muslim" background, according to Radio France International.

Defence Minister Jean-Yves Drian has confirmed the ex-French military personnel among jihadis in the Middle East, but has tempered the news by emphasizing that the situation of their joining the ranks of the Islamic State is "extremely rare". To counterbalance that news, France is spending $608 million in the following three-year period in support of the new anti-terror measures to produce increased intelligence-gathering on jihadis and radicals, among other pluses.