FRANCE: Unrest in la banlieue has been a regular feature of French life since 1981. But the riots of the past 12 days are unprecedented, says Sebastian Roché, a French researcher and professor who has published 10 books on security issues.
Not only has the violence spread across the country; "It has lasted longer, more intensely, over consecutive days," Mr Roché says. "Several times, rioters have used guns on police. That is extremely rare here."
The French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, has claimed the violence "is perfectly organised", adding that he is "trying to find out by whom and how".
Mr Sarkozy's analysis is "a classic police response", Mr Roché says. "The police always say that riots are organised by criminals who want to drive the police out of their areas.
"There's an element of truth to it, because there are young people who are at war with the police, who want confrontation. But it's misleading to ignore the backdrop of poverty and frustration and poor relations between (immigrant) young people and the police."
The fact that most of the rioters are African and Arab is never mentioned here. "The taboo is more than linguistic," Roché explains.
"Officially, there are no minorities in France. We are one nation, and in this nation the bond between the individual and the Republic is direct.
"There are no intermediaries, as there are in the US or Britain. So any reference to a person's community is wrong, illegitimate."
The fiction of French equality extends to scientific research.
"There are no statistical studies on youths of foreign origin, no studies on police discrimination towards minorities, no such thing as affirmative action," Roché continues. "The state is not capable of giving itself the tools to analyse the situation."
Like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, he says, "we ignore the reality of these communities".
Since research in France is government-funded, it is difficult to study the problems of minority communities. To conduct research on the poor relations between youths of foreign origin and the police, Roché discreetly slipped in a few extra questions on a broad-ranging questionnaire. He will publish the results in the US, not in France.
Compared to the ghettos he has visited in New York and Philadelphia, Roché says, French ghettos are attractive. From its appearance, an American would never believe that Vénissieux, outside Lyon, is one of the poorest, most violent ghettos in France.
"The government has spent huge amounts of money on improving the surroundings. Now we're destroying hundreds of high-rises to build individual housing units, on a human scale.
"It's a good thing, but is it really the priority? The problem is not the quality of housing, but what opportunities you give people."
Mr Sarkozy, the embattled interior minister whose comments about cleaning up housing projects with a power hose and fighting "scum" in the banlieues helped to spark the riots, published an opinion piece in his own defence in yesterday's Le Monde in which he boasts of reducing crime in France by 8 per cent in two years.
Opinion polls show that Mr Sarkozy has lessened the feeling of insecurity in France, Roché says, but the crime statistics are misleading.
"Most of the decrease was in car theft," he explains. "And there are three reasons for that: the east European market for stolen cars was saturated; manufacturers improved anti-theft mechanisms and video surveillance cameras were installed in parking lots. The decrease is not related to police activity." As for improving relations between France's African and Arab minorities and the police, Mr Sarkozy "forgot about that dossier", Roché says.
He advocates a profound reform of the 220,000-strong French police and gendarmerie force, bringing them in from the countryside where they are less needed, concentrating them in cities, and establishing metropolitan rather than national command structures.
Mr Sarkozy seemed to encourage the assumption that Islamists might be involved in the violence when he wrote in Le Monde that if "Republican order" broke down, it would be replaced by "the order of mafias or fundamentalists". Mr Roché says evidence indicates that "the most devout, traditionalist Muslims try to discourage stealing and fighting. It's true that religious extremism can lead to terrorsim, but that is not related to street crime. The psychological and social profile is completely different.
"Terrorists are often people who have gone to university, who want to sacrifice themselves for a cause. Juvenile delinquents like to harrass police and steal in shopping centres. There is no connection."
Nor does Mr Roché share the fear, often expressed by French commentators, that once these riots are over Muslim imams will be the main authority in the banlieues.
"It goes back to the problem of all intermediaries between the state and the individual being seen as illegitimate," he says. "The state should not see other frameworks as a form of competition."
