StrategyUnit

Introduction
While I still have the fear that we are seeing the raise of the Muslim Street in Europe, it is still far from the “Jihad in Europe” and “French Intifada” that we often see it described in the blogosphere. As of now, it still seems like male juvenile violence at a massive scale, only possible in the age of globalization (which provides for cheap and high-tech communication).

Christopher Dickey at Newsweek correctly describes the rioting as “incendiary flash-mobs”:

But by using cell-phone text messages to coordinate their incendiary flash-mobs, rioters in the city’s suburbs managed to burn thousands of cars, as well as buses, warehouses and stores

Back in 2001, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt at RAND, published “Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy”, which described the phenomena of Netwar in the context of transnational gangs to flash mobs and the Seattle Riots to Zapatistas. On Hooliganism in England, Netwar states:

Firms of opposing hooligans now use wireless technology and the Internet (email, etc.) for both marshalling their own combatants and challenging their opponents. For example, Milwall’s Bushwackers are believed to have used Internet tools (an interactive web site and real-time messaging) to organize and coordinate the violent activities of hooligans traveling to a match in Cardiff, where 14 people were hurt and 6 arrested.

Sounds familiar to anyone?

Welcome to Netwar.

Arquilla and Ronfeldt define Netwar as:

[The term] netwar refers to an emerging mode of conflict (and crime) at societal levels, short of traditional military warfare, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies attuned to the information age.

These protagonists are likely to consist of dispersed organizations, small groups, and individuals who communicate, coordinate, and conduct their campaigns in an internetted manner, often without a precise central command.
…
This includes familiar adversaries who are modifying their structures and strategies to take advantage of networked designs—e.g., transnational terrorist groups, black-market proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), drug and other crime syndicates, fundamentalist and ethnonationalist movements, intellectual-property pirates, and immigration and refugee smugglers. Some urban gangs, back-country militias, and militant single-issue groups in the United States have also been developing netwar-like attributes.

Like the rivaling English hooligans the Paris Rioters are doing battle – but unfortunately, its on the scale of bragging who burned the most cars, the most:

On Internet websites, young arsonists brag about their successes. Rioting, it seems, has become a trend sport, as youths in immigrant areas of provincial cities begin to rally to the call from Paris (source)

John Robb at Global Guerilla suspects that the riots are not solely motivated by the mindset of simple juvenile violence. What he sees is that in response to French Interior Minister Sarkozy campaign to crackdown on violence, the criminal elements took advantage of the death of the teenagers to help launch a loosely coordinate rioting to force Sarkozy to back down.

John Robb’s unique analysis on the Paris Riots is a breath of fresh air compared to the “Jihad in Europe” meme we are continually seeing or the social/cultural explanations. Robb’s view is very probably on the mark, but its impossible to tell (thus far), how involved the criminal elements are. Indeed, it would be naive to think there is no amount of criminal gangs supporting the rioters.

From: Netwar, p. 103

To return to Networks and Netwar and assuming that criminal gangs leveraging street mobs, we are seeing a combination of First Generation Gangs and most likely nascent Thirst Generation gangs – Hooligans and Drug Lords.

The difference between Second and Third Generation gangs is operations at a global level and political goals. In most cases, the political goals were focused on helping attain market protection for these organizations. As expounded in more depth by Manwaring’s “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency”:

This political action is intended to provide security and freedom of movement for gang activities. As a consequence, the third generation gang and its leadership challenge the legitimate state monopoly on the exercise of control and use of violence within a given political territory.

Linking between Third Generation Gang, Rioters and Islamofacist Organizations
There has always been a fear of a linkup between gangs and terrorist organizations and indeed in South American, there are often one and the same. “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency” goes into great length describing case studies in Central and South Americas.

The pervasiveness of the gangs and the narco-corruption influence it carries are some of the factors that lead to the empowerment of the third generation gangs in the Americas. Fortunately, the same cannot be said of France. These gangs have limited territory and the government is not so much paralyzed by narco-corruption but a lack of political will.

Besides the unknown factor of the criminal gangs in influencing the rioters, there is still the question of the potential role of Islamists. There are methods by which we can possiblely see a link up:

1. Outright collusion of the criminal element (and its rioters) with the Islamofacist.
2. Islamic Fundamentalism could be promoted to various ghettos as a method to “clean” the streets of gang and mob violence – a method of social reform. Indeed, this is an often heard argument of Islamic Fundamentalist – that they are simply trying to reform society and cleanse it of corruption (be it a woman’s ankle seen naked in public to narco trafficking). While reforming the ghettos - such reformist organizations could still keep the connections of the criminal elements to attain weapons and other materials for carrying acts of terrorism.

Amir Taheri takes a possible third route (Hat Tip to Belmont Club):

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the “millet” system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.
…
“All we demand is to be left alone,” said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local “emirs” engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

In essence, the Islamofacist and the French Government could settle on a political agreement: the Islamofacist will “keep the peace” in the neighborhoods to quell the rioting. The French will get back their facade of domestic harmony. The Criminal Gangs secure their turf and have Sarkozy stopped (for now). The Islamofacist attain the position of power as the mediator between the ghettos and the French Government.

So what exactly will happen? Things are still too early and information is far too little. But in the end, I am optimistic that the French will pull through and find a proper strategy.
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Update:

Today’s Wall Steet Journal (Nov. 07) echoes similar remarks. Here’s an excerpt from “Muslim Groups May Gain Strength from French Riots“:

…
As France enters its 12th night of rioting, Islamic organizations like the Tabligh, which originated in the 1920s in India, stand to benefit from the unrest and emerge strengthened from it. The Tabligh advocates a strict adherence to Islam but also a disengagement from society.

While gangs of disaffected youths, mostly from Muslim families, continue to rampage, burning thousands of cars and ransacking entire neighborhoods, some of these organizations are positioning themselves as mediators who can bring back the order the government has been unable to restore.

These groups don’t preach violence, but they do advocate something that is troubling Europe’s secular democracies: that Muslims should identify themselves with their religion rather than as citizens. Effectively, they are promoting a separate society within society and that brand of Islamist philosophy is seeping into many parts of Western Europe. Countries from France and Germany to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands haven’t succeeded in integrating their Muslim minorities — and Islamic organizations have carefully positioned themselves to fill the breach.

The riots “are a blessing for them because it gives them the role of intermediary,” says Gilles Kepel, a scholar who has studied and written extensively about the rise of Islam in France. That, in turn, puts them in a stronger position “to force concessions from the state,” such as demanding a repeal of the law France passed last year banning headscarves from public schools, he says.
…
There isn’t anything inherently Muslim about the violence: Islamic groups appear to have played no part in stirring up the trouble, and few rioters seem to be using Islam to justify their attacks. On the contrary, many Islamic groups say they are trying to calm things down. But the bleak projects that ring Paris and France’s other big cities have long been fertile recruiting grounds for Islamic groups that preach a fundamentalist form of the religion that is often hard to square with Europe’s pluralistic societies.

While their mediation seems helpful in the short-term, these Islamic organizations end up further alienating Muslim youths from mainstream society because they teach an ideology that is in conflict with France’s secular ideals, says Malek Boutih, a former head of human-rights group SOS Racism. “They recruit, they teach the Quran and they try to orient everything around the mosque,” says Mr. Boutih. “That’s it.”

That is especially true of the Tabligh group here in Clichy. Founded in India in 1927, the Tabligh sends its missionaries to Islam’s troubled frontiers: Central Asia, Africa and Europe. Although it preaches a peaceful brand of Islam, some of its former members have founded terrorist groups and been expelled from countries like Kazakhstan for engaging in radicalism. French intelligence officials say up to 80% of Islamic extremists in France were once Tabligh members and have dubbed the organization the “antechamber of fundamentalism.”
[Fury in the Suburbs]

The group’s influence has grown even as France has tried to integrate Islam by giving Muslims a political voice. In 2003, the government set up a body meant to represent the Muslim community to the state, called the French Council of the Muslim Faith, and held elections to it. The government hoped the council would be a moderating influence. Instead, it has been riven by divisions and has given official representation to some of the most radical Islamic groups in the country.