France: On the broad concrete slab that is the main square in Reynerie, a neighbourhood of Arab and black African heritage in this high-tech city, teenage boys debated with housewives the riots that have swept the neighbourhood.
"You're scaring the children," said one stocky woman, pushing her wide-eyed three-year-old girl out front as an exhibit. "We also have to live here, and we can't go on like this."
"I am not a terrorist, I'm a victim," responded one of the young men.
At about 7.30pm, the police arrived and debate ended. Riot squads dressed in black sealed two streets and a helicopter swooped shining spotlights on the crowd. Molotov cocktails and stones filled the air, a truck was set aflame. Soon, tear-gas floated through the parking lots and halls of the high-rise apartment blocks that make up these faceless suburban neighbourhoods.
None of the people interviewed on the square offered a clear view of where the unrest that has swept the country is going. Their words reflected deep agreement that the community faced heartless discrimination, but also divisions on how to fight it.
Chawki, a wiry 18-year-old man of Algerian descent, said the message of the destruction was clear, if not the outcome. "This is the language they understand," he said, referring to the government. "They know the conclusions to draw. We are sick of being discriminated against. That is all."
Young men and boys made up the core of the crowd, which sometimes numbered a few hundred. It looked like a hip-hop convention - plenty of loose athletic outfits and sweatshirts and baseball caps worn at angles. Daily life also persisted. Old men carried fresh baguettes home for the evening meal and vendors peddled contraband cigarettes.
One woman confronted the youths, calling for an end to the violence. She had lived in Bab el-Oued, a tough district of Algiers, during the heavy political violence of the 1990s, she said, and she did not want to live with terrorism in France. "We must get together and march on city hall, peacefully. Why burn our own cars here?" she asked.
The young men were unmoved. "I lived in Bab el-Oued, too. I am not a terrorist. I am a victim," replied one of them, who showed a bruise on his shoulder he said was caused by a tear-gas canister fired by French police. "Who would even speak about demonstrations if we did not do what we are doing?"
Shaggy-haired representatives of the Communist Party handed out leaflets condemning the central government for authorising curfews. Their statement called for better schools and job training.
Djillali Lahiani, an Algerian-born member of the Toulouse city government, said he came in a private capacity to observe. "This is going nowhere," he said. "It's an expression without programme. These young people are surrounded by maximum symbols of progress. Airbus [ Toulouse's main industry], for instance. They are proud of it, yet they don't feel part of it. They view the future and see nothing."
Demands for the resignation of Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-talking interior minister, were about the only specifics expressed. When rioting first broke out Sarkozy referred to rioters as "scum".
"Partly, the issue is not politics, but the treatment of a whole group of French, and Sarkozy symbolises it," said Lahiani.
There were no imams, no beards, no chants about the Koran. A cluster of wiry boys scoffed at the notion of a radical Islamic plot to destabilise France. "Of course, that is what the politicians would like everyone to think, to scare people," the man said.
Many were angry at the French media; one teenager said youths were being depicted as "animals".
Then a violent choreography began. The blue lights of police cars appeared down a street and the men shifted towards it like moths to a flame
Quickly, there was a real flame: a white truck with its cabin on fire. Then fire bombs lit up the ground near some police trucks. The same men who had been talking in the square suddenly all donned masks. Some picked up boulders and smashed them onto the pavement.
Then police with helmets and shields moved in to occupy the square. But the gendarmes left two escape routes to either side, and the rioters quickly dispersed. For a while, at least, the neighbourhood was calm again. - (LA Times/Washington Post Service)