As violence continued last week in the French capital's suburbs and spread to provincial cities, the French government has been accused of fiddling while Rome burns, writes David Tresilian from Paris With rioting and arson attacks in the suburbs east of Paris entering a second week last weekend and spreading to other towns across France, commentators and members of the French government have been scrambling to explain the causes of events that have seen running battles between police and masked youths, more than 2,000 cars burned, and arson attacks on businesses, schools, post offices and other public buildings. The rioting, which started following the accidental electrocution of two youths, Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, who had entered an electricity substation apparently in an attempt to escape from police, quickly spread from the town of Clichy-sous-Bois to other areas in the urban sprawl north-east of Paris, which is home to many members of France's minority population, often immigrant families of North- African or African origin. By last weekend, nine consecutive nights of rioting and arson attacks had seen the police unable to contain the violence and the government of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, formed earlier this year following the resignation of Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the previous prime minister, uncertain about what to do about it. The violence, the worst in at least a decade, has also focussed attention on the problems of the French banlieues, or the suburbs ringing many of France's larger cities, which are the equivalent in France of the Anglo-American inner cities and have the same kinds of problems. These areas, disproportionately hit by high levels of poverty and unemployment, have become notoriously isolated from the rest of France, and the young people in particular living in them can easily feel excluded from mainstream French society, whether economically, or for reasons of social or ethnic origin. Over past decades, successive French governments from both the right and the left have launched initiatives to improve living conditions in the banlieues and the prospects of young people living in them. However, these initiatives, ranging from job-creation schemes to increased public investment and community policing measures, have had few tangible results, and the youths responsible for the current wave of riots, born in the 1980s and with little to look forward to but life on one of the country's sink estates, have apparently been largely untouched by them. The violence has also focussed attention on the way in which the problems of the banlieues have been handled by the present centre-right government, and in particular by the high-profile interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, a hopeful in the 1997 presidential elections, when the second term of the current French president, Jacques Chirac, reaches its conclusion. Sarkozy, who has drawn on an American-style rhetoric of "zero-tolerance" in dealing with problems such as drug-dealing and organised crime in deprived areas and particularly in the banlieues, has been criticised in the French media for his hardline stance, which, according to some commentators, has only made the problems worse. The ambiguous reaction of the French government to the rioting earlier in the week also led to calls for ministers to stop using events for electoral advantage and instead to find a way of dealing with them. Thus, de Villepin, an aristocratic figure appointed by Chirac following the defeat suffered by his predecessor in a referendum on the draft European constitution earlier this year, represents a part of France untouched by the growing poverty of large sections of society, and he has been criticised for adopting a pose of studied silence in the early days of the riots, apparently pleased at the discomfort of his interior minister, who is a personal and presidential rival. While de Villepin's announcement that the government was preparing another "plan" to deal with the problems of the banlieues met with widespread scepticism last week, such plans having apparently not worked in the past, opinion in the French press on the best way forward was sharply divided, all the papers leading on the continuation and apparent escalation of the violence, but having differing views of its causes and the best ways of dealing with it. According to Le Figaro, France's oldest newspaper, which is controlled by the conservative businessman and politician Serge Dassault, the rioters were "a mixture of delinquent repeat offenders and copy-cat rioters" already known to the police. "We all know the people who are responsible," the newspaper quoted youths from the towns affected by the disturbances as saying. These were young people "who believe themselves to be part of a 'lost generation', said Kamel, 18 years old, with no qualifications and no job, 'not even temporary work'. 'With an Arab name and an address from round here, you've no chance,' said Hamza, 18 years old, who had watched the riots but 'had not taken part because it was Ramadan'." At the other end of the ideological spectrum, Libération, a left-wing daily, also gave voice to young people from the areas affected by the riots, this time emphasising the "lack of respect" they believed they were suffering from and demanding the resignation of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. "Rachid is from Clichy-sous-Bois," the newspaper wrote, "and for him there is no doubt as to the origins of the riots: the declarations made by Sarkozy and the tear-gas fired into the mosque [earlier in the week and allegedly by the police]. By attacking the mosque, they attacked a religious place, and we won't forgive that. No one said anything, which shows that we can be treated any way they like." Finally, in its weekend edition, Le Monde, voice of the French establishment, said the riots had called into question the police tactics adopted by Sarkozy and showed that a new approach was needed. However, the newspaper said, as a result of a "call to order by the president", the prime minister and minister of the interior were now working together to solve the crisis, setting aside their personal ambitions in the light of "the gravity of events".
