Yet another deadly terrorist attack in France

Hi all. The news from Nice has been shocking and distressing. A terrorist drove a big lorry through massive crowds at the Bastille Day celebrations, killing at least 84 people and injuring many more. I just had this painful feeling in my heart, this dreadful "oh no not again" mixture of disbelief and fear as I read the news on the BBC website. We have been here before in the not so distant past: the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the 13th November 2015 attacks in Paris and then the bombings on the 22nd March 2016 in Brussels. It is clear that we are living in a time of terror, where we are getting used to terrorist attacks in city centers, where unharmed civilians are the targets. There was a time when embassies were bombed or planes were hijacked by terrorists: it is easy to protect such targets, it is harder to protect ordinary folks in public areas. As someone who has studied and worked in France, a fluent speaker of French and someone who knows the situation in France well, I'm doing a Q&A to address the wider issue of terrorism and France.

#JesuisNice

Q: Could the French police have done more to have protected the citizens in Nice? 

A: It is hard to say - security measures would have undoubtedly been taken to cordon off the area for the fireworks on the promenade and no doubt there would have been plenty of police searching bags, monitoring the situation. No one anticipated this kind of attack - using the lorry as a weapon to run people over. I have seen around important buildings like the Houses of Parliament in London, big concrete barricades in front of the fences have been put up to prevent would be suicide bombers from loading up a car with explosives and driving at the fence or gate of the building at great speed. It is easy to protect a building like that, but the Promenade des Anglais in Nice is 7 km long - how do fence off and protect an area that big? People had gathered on the promenade and the beach to watch the fireworks which were set off in the sea - logistically, trying to police huge events like that are challenging to say the least. France had actually hosted the Euro 2016 football tournament without any major problems (apart from some fights amongst fans) and many were relieved that the football matches were not targeted by the terrorists. As more details emerge from the investigations about whom the attacker was and whether or not he was monitored by the police, what his motivations were, how he had been radicalized (or not), many more lessons can be learnt.

Q: Is it safe now to visit Paris, Nice and other parts of France? Should I cancel my trip to France?

A: I think it would be an overreaction to cancel your trip to France because of this. I visited Brussels just two weeks after the horrific terrorist attacks this spring and yes, it felt tense at times, sad at other times when you read messages posted on lamp posts, trees, doors, just about anywhere people who express themselves. There was a constant presence of police and the military everywhere, I always travel around with a small bag (for a small bottle of water, maps, snacks, my shopping etc) and I just got used to having my bag searched every time I entered a building or train station. The security personnel were just doing their job and were very polite about it - I always thanked them for searching my bag because I know they are doing it to keep me safe. I also remember how we went through the same thing in London after the 7/7 2005 bombings - again, tight, tense security everywhere, but as a result, you do end up feeling a lot safer than otherwise. Please do still visit France - be co-operative if you are stopped and questioned or if someone wants to search you or your bag, but you really shouldn't be majorly inconvenienced by this extra security.

Nice is a very popular tourist destination.

Q: How will this affect the political situation in France - will we see a swing to the far right (Le Front National, Le FN) and a rise of xenophobia and racism, particularly against Muslims? As we have seen from the recent Brexit vote, there is always evidence of a tense anti-immigrant sentiment across the water in Britain, what about the situation in France then? What do you think may happen as a result? 

A: Undoubtedly, along with the massive outpouring of grief, there will be anger. France is a nation in mourning right now because of the massive number of killed in this violent attack and the random way people died because of where they happened to be standing. If they stood just a few meters away, they would have been spared: that makes people think, "it could have been me or someone I love." Now there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I think we are still in the denial stage (or at least I am) as we have barely had a few hours to come to terms with what has happened - the anger will come, undoubtedly, if it hasn't already come. It may be rather cumbersome to use this "five stages of grief" model collectively on a nation, but anger is quite a natural reaction that many will go through (as I have before, when London and Paris were attacked). And yes, some people will direct this anger towards Muslims and attack targets like mosques or even Muslim women in public who wear traditional headscarves. We hope it won't happen of course but it seem inevitable. The Le FN may make some political gains from this but it is too early to tell - this is not the first terrorist attack in France in recent times. The challenge of the political leaders now is to address this grief, this anger that will arise from the grief and give people a way to channel it constructively rather than bottle it up. There is so much pain in France now, this process is not going to be easy.

Q: It seems the attacker is a French national, rather than a foreign terrorist. Does this surprise you at all? 

A: Actually, no, it is hardly surprising. In the last few attacks in France and Belgium, the attackers are practically all either French or Belgian citizens who have been radicalized in Europe. In this case, the attacker seems to be a French citizen of Tunisian origin. France has had many colonies in Africa - this legacy has meant that a large number of immigrants from these former colonies have settled in France over the years. The fact that many of these former French colonies are still very much French-speaking today means that their citizens are naturally drawn to the bright lights of Paris rather than Berlin, New York or Tokyo. As a result, France has the highest number of Muslims amongst all Western European countries with over 6 million Muslims - they account for about 10% of French citizens. Due to a law dating from 1872, French law prohibits performing census by making distinction between its citizens regarding their race or their beliefs - so these numbers are estimates, but just over 6 million and around 10% are the widely accepted figures. These Muslims are mostly immigrants who come from many of France's former colonies in Africa.

A sense of dejavu - we've been here before.

Now there has been the elephant in the room that even French people hesitate to talk about, especially with non-French people: that is the problem of assimilation. Now I actually adore the concept of assimilation in France: for them, being French is a state of mind, you choose to be French. You can be black, white or Asian but as long as you speak French, you adopt a French cultural identity and you want to be like the rest of French people, then you are French. The nationality is not tied up with skin colour at all, I would compare that to being American whereby you can be black, white or Asian and American at the same time. In contrast to the situation in the UK: I am an immigrant, I hold a British passport but I would never claim that I am English as people would look at me and say, "you're British of course and a Londoner, but you're not English. You're not even white to begin with." It feels immensely frustrating that I can tick two of the boxes: British and London but I somehow can't tick the English box despite the obvious geographical fact that London is in fact in England and not an island somewhere in the ocean, far away from England.

That's the story I love to tell - that the French are not racist at all but their model depends on successfully assimilating millions of immigrants from their former colonies, but that has not happened. Many immigrants are trapped in a cycle of poverty, living in poor inner cities neighbourhoods, unable to access proper education and jobs and becoming more and more isolated from mainstream society. It then becomes a vicious cycle, with each generation becoming more and more isolated from mainstream society, more and more deprived and more prone to radicalization. The French would often point to the Vietnamese migrants as a great example of how this has worked: there is a sizable Vietnamese minority in France as Vietnam was an ex-French colony. Many Vietnamese refugees fled to France during the Vietnam war and today, they are the model, perfect migrant community. They study extremely hard, work even harder and most importantly, are very much assimilated into French society today. That is why many often wonder why this uniquely French assimilation model worked well with the Vietnamese community but not with other immigrant groups.

That's me, standing on the Promeade des Anglais in Nice, in 2008.

It is a pretty miserable existence, living on the edges of French society as a poorly assimilated immigrant. You're in a no-win situation - French society tells you that they are not at all racist, far from it - but they will discriminate against those who do not help themselves, to improve themselves. But at the same time, you do not have access to quality education, you are brought up in a poverty-stricken inner-city neighbourhood with a high crime rate and bad reputation. Riots can break out on your doorstep where you live. The school you went to hardly gave you a decent education to enable you to find a job. French gatekeepers are known to ignore applicants from such neighbourhoods - how are you supposed to improve yourself when the odds are so stacked against you? And somehow it is your fault for not assimilating into French society? "Why can't you be more like the Vietnamese?" You are constantly asked, "many of these Vietnamese fled Vietnam in the war and arrived in France with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing, today their sons and daughters are doctors, lawyers, bankers and millionaire businessmen. If they can do it, then so can you, what's your excuse?" So the fact that the attacker in Nice was a French citizen doesn't come as a surprise, I am not sure if anyone has any solutions to the issue of poorly assimilated Muslim migrants in France.

Q: What can we expect in the following days, in France? 

A: We are still hearing different stories emerging on the news from witnesses - one story more harrowing than the last. I am getting the news in both English and French (French is my second language, I'm fluent in French after having lived in France) and I think the English news is a bit more subdued because a lot of eye witness accounts are translated into English and voiced by actors or newsreaders. Whereas when you hear the original accounts in French, oh man. I just sat by my computer and wept like a baby. I couldn't help but cry when I heard the horrific stories - there was one about a woman who held the hand of a bad injured woman who was hit by the truck, she didn't know if the wounded woman would make it and didn't want her to die alone, so she just sat there, amongst the dead bodies holding this badly injured woman's hand, talking to her, knowing that she could die any moment. She didn't care about her safety - she just needed to do whatever she could for that badly injured woman. Now imagine, a whole nation of 66 million people feeling like this - there is so much pain, so much grief, so many tears. I think the question is what the French people will do once the crying is over. So yes, we will see a lot more security presence in the streets of major French cities in the following days and weeks. But beyond that, well... that brings me neatly onto my next question.

The last terrorist attack in Paris was barely 9 months ago.

Q: What can France do to prevent another terrorist attack like that? 

What needs to start is a dialogue about the very marginalized migrant communities and what can be done to better integrate them into mainstream French society. It is so easy to paper over the cracks in French society and see only what you want to see. Let me give you a simple example: when I worked in Paris, my office was at Les Docks: Cité de la Mode et du Design. That's a pretty grand name for a fabulously modern building on the Seine, in the 13th Arrondissement of Paris. On the ground, first and second floors, there are chic art galleries, designer boutiques and exhibition spaces used by high-end companies to showcase their products to the French media. There is also a gorgeous restaurant and a fashionable bar on the roof top garden of the building. Sounds good so far? Oh did I mention the basement, which is open to the banks of the river? Now the plan originally to create riverside cafes, where hip Parisians could sip fancy coffees which watching life go by on the Seine. Sounds like a good plan to me.

But no. That never happened. The basement is completely unoccupied and has been taken over by scores of homeless people desperate to seek shelter. The walls are covered with graffiti and the smell is unbearable. Look, there are no toilets there and the many homeless people have to relieve themselves somewhere - so the stench of human waste can sometimes reach us on the upper floors of the building when the wind is blowing in the right direction. I was warned by my colleagues to avoid the basement, but being me, I had to go down and take a look for myself. It was scary how a flight of stairs can separate two worlds like that. A security guard stands guard at the staircase linking the basement to the ground floor, ensuring that the homeless people do not come anywhere near those who work in the building or the rich people who have come to shop or dine there. We had quite a lot of left over food from the catering of an event one night and the staff were just throwing the left overs into the bins - I suggested giving the food away to the homeless people and my suggestion was met by quizzical looks. A French colleague walked over to me and explained, in English (as if to make a point), "no you don't understand, we don't do that here".

On the roof top gardens of Les Docks, pretty nice eh?

I wasn't satisfied with her answer. I persisted, saying that all they had to do was to give me the left over food and I'll bring it down myself. The catering staff then helpfully told me (again in English - I can't tell you how much it irks me when French people speak to me in English), "no Alex, it is not safe for you to go down there alone at this time of the night. We are concerned for your safety, that's all." Another colleague quipped, "if you start giving these people free food, it would just encourage them and they start to expect us to give them free food, then more people would congregate down there. The security guards don't want us to encourage that." In desperation I suggested just leaving the left over food on neutral territory, on the main road Quai d'Austerlitz so the homeless people could help themselves. And again, I was told, "you cannot just leave food waste and trash like that on the streets of Paris, that's like, littering, polluting the environment you know. It is against the law. It is forbidden. C'est interdit." Believe you me, I really tried but there was absolutely nothing I could have said or done to get them to give away the left over food to the homeless - they were determined it was to be put in the trash, to be collected with the rest of the rubbish.

You get the idea - that building is a microcosm of modern France, where the very rich can be in the same building as the destitute, yet manage to somehow avoid each other thanks to the security guards who make sure of that. Until French people start asking more profound questions about how to address division in their society, between Christians and Muslims, between the working class and the middle/upper classes, between the rich and the poor, some people will always be marginalized and be vulnerable to radicalization. It is of course, very easy for someone like me to wax lyrical about how divided French society is (the same way I have blogged about how divided British society is) but how we are going to heal the divide is easier said than done. I suppose it would begin with a left-wing government in power, taking concrete steps to improve social mobility by investing in education and skills training - but even with the very best of "Robin Hood" intentions, that is still a very long term project at best. Big problems do not have simple solutions.

I used to call Paris home, I am a former Parisian.

Q: How will foreign students in France be affected by acts of terrorism like this? 

A: I think it depends on where your university is. If your university is in the center of a big city, then there might be additional security on campus: we're talking about more security guards searching bags, checking ID, metal detectors at the main entrances, closing off parts of the university to the public. Another important issue is that students may have their activities more closely monitored by the authorities: you see, higher education in France is free. Oh yeah, whilst counties like America and the UK charge an arm and a leg for universities, Indeed, some British and American students study at French universities because they can't afford to go to university at home. French universities are free (well, the state pays for it) as the French believe that it is worth creating a better educated society. What this means is that many students do leave home to go to university to try to get a degree, given how affordable it is - young and impressionable 18 year old teenagers, far away from home are vulnerable to be radicalized. So French students may expect more scrutiny over their social activities at university - it will be a mix of approaches: for example, efforts could be made to make the general student population more aware about Islam more to foster cross-cultural understanding and forge ties with the Muslim community. But at the same time, students who spot others indulging in suspicious activities will be encouraged to report them to the authorities (and the authorities would make a far greater effort to investigate such reports). Otherwise, the impact on the life of foreign students in France wouldn't be big. 

Q: How have you been personally affected? Did you know anyone killed/injured in Nice?

A: Not that I know of - I do have a lot of French friends but no one has said anything thus far. I do have a former colleague who is from Nice, he lives and works in London now but I fear he may know someone caught up in the tragedy. I cried a lot today - I don't quite know why but I think that given the person I am, I don't tend to cry or even show any sense of weakness when I am under stress. I usually maintain a very composed exterior even if I am feeling terrible on the inside. I've been under a lot of stress of late at work and keeping a stiff upper lip - that's why I suppose it was easier for me to cry with sadness over the tragedy that has happened in Nice as it doesn't reflect imply that I am weak if I cry. Sensitive, emotional, maybe but not weak. You know, I am the kinda guy who can break a bone in my leg during an accident and not cry - so I don't know what has come over me today when I allowed myself to cry like that.

Okay, I hope you have found this useful. I'm sure some of you will have other questions about France in the aftermath of this terrorist attack. Please leave me a comment below and we can talk about it. I don't promise to have all the answers but for what it is worth, I am happy to offer you my perspective. Many thanks for reading, merci beaucoup.