Back in the late 1970s, I spent a year in France. I was somewhat surprised at the shear number of North African immigrants even back then. Whole cities like Roubaix near the Belgian border, were almost entirely Muslim. The government actively practiced segregation in public housing. With the shortage of housing after the second world war, the French erected soviet-style concrete housing projects called ZUPs (planned urban zones) consisting of twenty-story standardized apartment buildings. Arabs were placed in one building, French in another. Even then the French were in an uproar about the immigrants, although it had very little to do with their religion and everything to do with their cultural customs, which after all, weren't very French. Stories abounded about people raising goats in their apartments and similar "outrages".

Still, at the time, very little if anything was heard or seen of Arab violence other than petty theft by the young, which was indistinguishable from the petty theft of the native French adolescents.

Ten years ago, I was doing quite a lot of business in France and recall being at Charles de Gaulle airport about the time where Muslims were returning from the Hajj. What struck me was how unbelievably hostile immigration and customs officials were towards returning pilgrims, many of whom spoke poor French. I was more than a little nervous when it was my turn, but a white foreigner, particularly one that spoke good French, was an entirely different matter. It was jarring at how different my reception was as compared to that of my Muslim fellow travellers.

Three years ago, my son was sitting in a car in southern France, immobilized by a riot unfolding around him where young Arabs were going at the gens d'armes hammer and tongs.

There is a clear progression here, and there should be very little surprise that things have gotten to the point where young Arabs are burning over a hundred cars a night and are escalating their attacks on police and rescue services.

What is surprising is how the French seem intent on pretending that this isn't all happening.

Plusieurs incidents graves ont eu lieu dans la nuit de mercredi 25 à jeudi 26 octobre dans la banlieue parisienne. Alors que les violences s'étaient concentrées ces dernières semaines sur les forces de l'ordre, des groupes d'individus s'en sont pris à des bus et à des automobilistes en Seine-Saint-Denis, dans l'Essonne et dans les Hauts-de-Seine. Ces incidents, qui paraissent prémédités, interviennent à la veille de l'anniversaire de la mort de deux adolescents à Clichy-sous-Bois, le 27 octobre 2005, qui avaient provoqué plusieurs semaines de violences.

For those that don't speak French:

Several grave incidents took place during the night of Wednesday the 25th and Thursday the 26th of October in the Parisian suburbs. Although the violence has been concentrated these last few weeks on law enforcement, the groups of individuals have taken up with buses and automobile drivers in Seine-Saint-Denis, Essonne and in Hauts-de-Seine (Paris suburbs). These incidents, which appear premeditated, come on the eve of the anniversary of the death of two adolescents in Clichy-sous-Bois (one of those segregated Arab neighborhoods), on October 27, 2005, which provoked several weeks of violence.

Le Monde does dare mention what everyone already knows--that these are Arabs youths, but what is really remarkable is how the paper attributes a year's worth of Arab violence all over France to a greivance over the death of two young lads.

Its too bad Mark Steyn doesn't speak French, because that country definitely needs his brand of unblinking analysis about what is really going on in that country.

It is simply no accident that young Arabs are attacking law enforcement--often armed with handguns (where would they get those in gun-controlled-to-death France?) and public transportation. What they are doing--effectively I might add, is creating zones of control--areas where there is no police presence and no means of entering or leaving the area except through checkpoints.

Why might they want to do that?

We only have to look at the Iraq insurgency to get a glimpse into the strategy. When the insurgents had control over Fallujah, that area became a staging ground for IED and car bomb construction, importation and stock-piling of weapons and of course a safe haven for your basic terrorists. No surprisingly, we've seen the same thing in southern Lebanon for years, Waziristan on the Afghan-Pakistan border, and most recently in Gaza.

Notably, in the same article, we find that buses don't run in certain suburbs after dark.

It doesn't really matter how or why this intifada got started in France--it matters where it will end up, and France's unwillingness to even acknowledge that there is a problem is truly disturbing.

..but not to the French. You know who disturbs them? Who they've taken measures to repress?

The Jehovah's Witnesses.

Yeah, there a real threat to the state...

UPDATE: A somewhat different view of France's actions and future.