Friday, the 13th of any month, according to local French lore, is always regarded as an inauspicious day, best spent at home. Friday, 13th November, 2015, will be remembered by the French and the rest of the world as a day of calamity and bloodshed, the horrific slaughter of innocent civilians,b a day when IS declared war on France. For that reason no doubt, President Hollande, who was at the Stade du France watching the friendly match between Germany and France when the two explosions occurred outside the Stadium, angrily declared that this time France was at war. He was, no doubt, referring to the more muted French Government reaction after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
For us in India, it was a chilling recollection of the Mumbai attacks with a similar pattern of multiple attacks, carefully timed across the city and always targeting innocent vulnerable civilian victims. Coming on the eve of the G-20 Meeting in Anatolia, Turkey, and the Climate Change Conference on 30th November in Paris, the attacks on France, a state traditionally considered to be tough on terrorism, exposed the peculiar vulnerability of democratic, open societies to international terrorism, IS style. France’s Achilles heel lies in its large French population which is being regularly targeted through social media by IS. Many French Muslims are fighting for the IS in Syria. Reportedly, the perpetrators of the attacks spoke perfect French, giving rise to speculation that citizens of the Republic were responsible for the devastation. For the French, whose patriotism is legendary, it was hard to come to terms not just with the after effect of the attacks but that they could have been carried out by French citizens.
In the weeks and months ahead, the French and indeed Europe would need to ponder on whether its Syria Policy, support of rebel groups and active promotion of the destabilisation of Assad and the Syrian Government has given rise to the IS. Has the Republic unknowingly created this monster? Similar questions were raised in India when Bhindranwale took refuge in the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Have the French efforts to integrate their Muslim population failed? To what extent has multiculturalism itself collapsed, not just in France but across Europe, a crisis further compounded by the unceasing flow of Syrian migrants? Clearly, these questions need to be addressed as fences go up across Europe, as the Schengen regime progressively collapses and France and the rest of the world strengthen their defences against future terrorist attacks on innocent victims.
(The author is a former Indian Ambassador and headed the Europe desk at the Indian Foreign Office)