"France will take all measures to dissuade, prevent and punish those who are tempted to fight where they have no reason to be," French President François Hollande announced earlier this week, referring to the estimated 700 French nationals and residents who have engaged alongside jihadist groups in the civil war in Syria since it began in 2011.
Hollande was speaking ahead of the presentation to the French cabinet on Wednesday by interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve of a series of measures - which were approved - to tackle the radicalisation of young French Muslims, and notably the growing numbers leaving for Syria, some of whom have been discovered to be as young as 15.
The government said on Wednesday that 300 French nationals are believed to be currently among jihadist groups in Syria, while another 25 French citizens or people registered as resident in France have died in the fighting there.
"French Islam is not radical...what we need to do is prevent this behaviour,” said Cazeneuve in a television interview shortly before the cabinet met. “Minors and teenagers are often fragile and can fall into the hands of preachers of hate and recruiters."
The new measures include a proposal for the establishment of a dedicated hotline for parents to alert police authorities and social services about what they consider to be a radicalisation of their children, the retention of passports of those suspected of wanting to join jihadist combat, the stripping of French nationality from those engaged in jihadist activities and the deportation of foreigners resident in France who are found to be engaged in terrorist activities overseas.
But just who are these young French people drawn to the jihad against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad? Radio France International journalist David Thompson, who works for the French state radio’s Africa service, last month published a book, Les Français jihadistes, in which he interviewed 18 French nationals who had joined jihadist ranks in Syria. They confided in depth about their conversion to fundamentalism, their hopes for the future, and how they reached the jihad combatants in Syria. Half of them are from non-Muslim backgrounds, while all consider themselves to have turned their backs on a materialistic culture they once espoused.
“Islam has given us our identity back because France has humiliated us,” commented one of them, Yassine, who left his wife, child and parents to fight in Syria. They all express a feeling of alienation with French society, and for some a rejection of their own Muslim community which they now judge to be too permissive.
Mediapart’s Arab affairs correspondent Pierre Puchot interviewed Thomson about what he learnt of the motives of France’s jihadists, the key role of the internet in the recruitment for the jihad, notably via the social media and video sites that carry the extreme Islamist propaganda of al-Qaeda chiefs, and the logistics for reaching Syria.
Following here are translated extracts from that interview which can be viewed in full, in French, in the video below.
David Thomson: “In my book I tell the story of one of these young people, who wasn’t at all Muslim, who sold drugs in French housing estates and who left, three months after his conversion [to Islam], to join the jihadists, in this case Tunisian, and today this person is in Syria.”
“He’s someone who discovered Islam on his own, when one day by chance he had a look at the Koran. It was a revelation for him. He had a life that he himself describes as illicit – alcohol, partying, discotheques, girls and delinquency. Then one day he put a halt to everything, he read the Koran for three days, without stopping, and after these three days he went on to the internet and learnt how to pray. “
“Very soon, he said to himself ‘if I don’t quickly leave the land of infidels’ – meaning France – ‘for a land of Islam I run the risk of dying as an infidel and destined for hell’. So he joined up with the Tunisian jihadists [...] Very quickly one discovers that what one learns on the internet is often in contradiction with what is heard in the mosques so he said to himself that the real message of Islam is not in the French mosques but abroad, so he left for Tunisia. In Tunisia he met with people, notably those from Ansar al-Sharia, the principle Tunisian jihadist movement. He took advantage of the wave of Tunisians who left for Syria to also take part in this movement.”
MEDIAPART: What is the role of the internet in the radicalisation of these people?
D.T.: “There is often talk of secret, hidden jihadist forums. In fact, everything today happens in broad daylight [...] it all happens quite simply on Facebook. How to find the way of getting to Syria is easy. It is often by finding a friend who has already left, in three chats he explains how to join up with him there [...] there are no branches, no networks, the process is completely artisanal. Everything happens in a very simple manner. By a simple chat on Facebook you can today leave for Syria.”
MEDIAPART: There are also the videos.
D.T.: “Indeed, there are videos which are a central element in the acquisition of jihadist knowledge, what they themselves call the Jihadist science. These are videos that are all translated into French, original versions that carry French subtitles like American TV series, except that there you have in front you the whole gamut of speeches of the big chiefs of al-Qaeda, the international Jihadist grandees, and all that is accessible to all. Not, once again, on Jihadist forums, but on You Tube or Dailymotion, by simply typing for example Anwar al-Awlaki. Anwar al-Awlaki, who is now dead following an American drone strike [in 2011], was the media representation for al-Qaeda in the Arabic peninsula. It’s he who launched the Jihad on the social media, and today the social media allows [the Jihadists] to reach a different public than that of the forums – much larger, much younger.”
MEDIAPART: How is the departure for the jihad in Syria organised?
D.T.: “Today, the French Jihadists all finance their Jihad themselves. They all leave with a small sum, from 1,000 euros to 10,000 euros. Every means for financing the Jihad is acceptable. There are fraudulent consumer credit loans, whereby you take out revolving credit, like with Cofidis or Sofinco and so on, which will never be repaid. That allows for the financing of the journey, but also life over there [...] it also provides funds for weapons. There are also people who carry out armed robbery. Remember the hold up in the [fast food outlet] Quick last September in the Yvelines [west of Paris], there too the takings were to be used to help fund travel to Syria. They consider that it is not robbery because, in their ideology, stealing – or rather ‘appropriating’ – the belongings of infidels is licit under Islam on condition that it is as part of a Jihad on god’s road.”
MEDIAPART: How do the jihadists get to Syria?
D.T.: “The majority of people today leave simply by reserving a plane ticket on a holiday travel website. So you leave by plane, a direct Paris to Istanbul flight, and from Istanbul you make it to a frontier town like Gaziantep or Hatay. Then you pass into Syria. That can be done very quickly, in a few days if that. A guide will take you past the border and in Syria someone will come and collect you and take you to one of the Jihadist districts of one of the towns in northern Syria. It’s done very simply. There are some who leave [France for Syria] by road, but the most common way is by plane.”
MEDIAPART: How do you interpret the comment by one of those you interviewed, who says Islam returned to him his identity’?
D.T.: “The phrase, ‘Islam has given us our identity back because France has humiliated us’ is one that I find well sums up what is going through the mind of a French Jihadist today. Just before making that comment, I asked this young Jihadist, who is today in Syria among the ranks of the official branch of al-Quaeda, what it was that sparked his idea that the Jihad is required of every Muslim, why had he become a Jihadist. He told me that in France, he had everything that a son of an immigrant could have –he was the son of a Moroccan immigrant and 26 years old. He said he had a salary of 2,500 euros per month, I had a wife, I had loving parents, a family of brothers and sisters, everything the son of an immigrant could have but he could not obtain more. He felt that the fact of being the son of an immigrant, an Arab, from the [low-income] city suburbs, were barriers. He said it was thanks to that that he became interested in his religion. He said it was fortunate that ‘we’ cannot be the equal of the infidels, the French, because otherwise we couldn’t have become interested in our religion. It was then that he came out with that comment, ‘Islam has given us our identity back because France has humiliated us’.
MEDIAPART: Who are the French jihadists?
D.T.: “All of them consider themselves as converted, even those who are of Muslim culture. Of the 18 who agreed to answer my questions, half were from a Christian culture, and the other half of Muslim culture although almost none of them were from practicing Muslim families. All of them consider themselves as converts because either they have undergone a conversion or either they had returned to Islam. But most of them consider they had a previous period of ignorance [...] This life beforehand was often a life of going out, partying, clubbing like all the French, because as they told me, they grew up as French, they went to school in France. Then, one day, they consider that they must completely separate from that life, to totally cut off from this materialist life, so as to dedicate themselves [to a lifestyle with which to be able] to go to heaven, and that, in their eyes, involves engaging in the Jihad.”
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- Les Français jihadistes, by David Thomson is published in France by Les éditions Les Arènes, priced 18 euros.
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English version by Graham Tearse