Since 2015, terrorist attacks have killed 246 people in France, deepening political divides and undermining the country’s unity. France has undergone drastic reforms to reshuffle its judicial, security, and intelligence architecture to address the threat; it is now mobilizing the entire society to counter Salafi-jihadi radicalization. This brief examines how France escaped the trap of division, which sacrifices it accepted, and how such unique experience can prove useful to other Western countries.
Between January 7 and January 9, 2015, three decades of jihadism in France converged in the execution of what was then the deadliest terror attack in France since 1961. Among the three perpetrators, two were brothers who attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on behalf of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), leaving 12 dead. The third perpetrator, who killed four people in a widely-watched hostage situation at a kosher grocery store, claimed to have carried out the attack on behalf of the Islamic State (ISIL)—although it was never confirmed by the terrorist group. At the time, al Qaeda was more known to the French public than ISIL.
The perpetrators all had one thing in common: they had all met an individual in jail, Djamel Beghal, a figure from the Algerian terrorist networks of the 1990s who had emerged as an Al Qaeda operative in Europe after having trained in Afghanistan.
The French public understood that the January 2015 attacks constituted a historic moment—a tipping point. The largest public demonstrations in France since the end of World War II—approximately four million people—were held to publicly champion freedom of speech and unity, known as “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie). It was believed that the attacks were in retaliation for Charlie Hebdo’s reproduction of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as well as Charlie Hebdo's general rejection of Islam (as of any religious dogma). The magazine had received death threats for years.
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