In 18 months France has been the target of three major terrorist
attacks claimed by terrorists in which more than 230 people have died.
The
country has also been kept on edge by a succession of shocking but less
bloody attacks and attempts to kill, often by lone extremists.
With
the Daesh claiming responsibility for the latest massacre in Nice in
which 84 people were killed, we ask why France has become such a target
for terrorists:
Fight against terror
From sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East, France is in the front line of the fight against radical Islamist groups.
It is the second biggest contributor to US-led airstrikes against Daesh in Iraq and Syria.
Ahead of Thursday's Nice attack, President Francois Hollande
announced that the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, a symbol of
French military power, was being deployed anew in the Middle East.
France
has declared itself "at war" since the November 13 attacks in Paris in
which 130 people died, which investigators believe was planned by Daesh
from Syria and Iraq.
In sub-Saharan Africa France has 3,000
military personnel on the ground taking part in Operation Barkhane,
targeting several terror groups such as Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM).
But
despite being weakened by French military intervention in Mali in 2013,
AQIM continues to mount spectacular attacks such as those in the
Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou and at Grand Bassam in the Ivory Coast.
Hated secular modelFrance's strict secular
laws which ban the Islamic veil in schools and covering the face in
public have outraged Islamic hardliners, according to religious
historian Odon Vallet.
"For them France's clear-cut secularism is incompatible with Islam," he added.
The
country's commitment to freedom of speech, which allows unfettered
criticism of religion, has also put it in the terrorists' crosshairs.
The
deadly attack against the Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015 came
out of the assailants' fury at the satirical weekly's controversial
cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
"France is the country where the debate over Islam" gets the most heated, argued sociologist Raphael Liogier.
But
"history is also a hidden reason", Vallet said, pointing out France's
"role in the break up of the Ottoman empire" in 1920 which led to the
end of the caliphate.
The Sykes-Picot agreement that carved up
Iraq and Syria between France and Britain is often cited by Daesh as the
root of the region's problems.
This "colonial history makes France one of Daesh's principal enemies," Vallet added.
'Social apartheid'
France is home to the biggest Muslim community in Europe, estimated at five million people.
Most
are descended from families from the country's former northern African
colonies, with which France has a painful shared history, with hundreds
of thousands dying during the Algerian war of independence.
Job
discrimination has further hampered integration, with some third- and
even fourth-generation immigrants claiming they are not made to feel
properly French.
Tensions with the police are never far from the
surface in some of the rundown suburban housing estates with large
immigrant populations, where youth unemployment runs at more than 40
percent.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls went as far as to talk of "a
territorial, social and ethnic apartheid" on some of the estates that
exploded into three weeks of rioting in 2005.
Homegrown fighters
As
many as 600 French citizens have rallied to the Daesh flag in Iraq and
Syria as well as many French-speaking Tunisians and Moroccans.
Returning
fighters "can slip very easily into the country", said Patrick Calvar,
head of the French domestic intelligence agency. "There are multiple
targets and the terrorists can strike at the easy ones."
The
suspected mastermind of the November 13 attacks in Paris, the Belgian
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is one such returning fighter. He first came to
notoriety in Syria filming Daesh atrocities there.
Weakened government
Just
as security experts say France is the Western country most at threat
from attack, the authority of its Socialist government is wavering as a
2017 presidential election looms.
Francois Hollande is one of the
most unpopular French presidents on record and, as in other European
countries, the far-right is on the rise.
Terrorist attacks, which
are designed to divide and polarise, have added to the febrile
atmosphere with polls putting the far-right ahead in the first round of
the presidential vote.
Written by Aurele Berenger
Aurele Berenger is a social activist and student of Universitiy of Paris where he is studying Political Science.He is a political writer,an upcoming actor and and an upcoming political activist.
