'Bin Laden!' Becomes Rallying Cry for France's Dispossessed
Chris Hedges New York Times Service
Wednesday, October 17, 2001
LA COURNEUVE, France La Cite des 4,000 is a slate-gray housing project where many Muslim immigrants live in apartments with windows closed off by cement blocks, where trash spills down stairwells, gangs openly deal cocaine and hashish, and the burned-out hulks of cars lie in parking lots.
Like many pockets of poor Muslim immigrants, La Cite is a world unto itself, where young men are caught in a profound and disturbing identity crisis, suffering the sting of racism and the plague of unemployment. Some have come to see Osama bin Laden as a savior.
It does not take long in La Cite des 4,000, nicknamed the Bronx because of the high crime rate, to understand why some of France's 4 million Muslims feel repression, resentment and an urge to act. France has expressed strong support for America's war on terrorism, but the government is clearly concerned about containing Muslim anger at home.
That anger was evident Oct. 6 when, for the first time since Algeria's war for independence from France, the two countries played a soccer match. French-born Muslims hooted and whistled during the French national anthem. The crowd chanted "Bin Laden! Bin Laden!"
When it was clear the Algerian team would lose, the Algerian fans stormed the field waving Algerian flags and stopped the match. As the police were stepping in, the crowd pelted two French ministers, both women, with bottles.
The turmoil was striking, not least because France's relationship with its large Muslim population appeared to have improved after France won the World Cup soccer tournament in 1998 with a team that included immigrants and the children of immigrants. That progress now seems to have evaporated. At La Cite, it seems clear that Mr. bin Laden has contrived to express the rage of many dispossessed Muslims.
"You want us to weep for the Americans when they bomb and kill Palestinians and Iraqis every day?" said Mohaam Abak, 21, a Moroccan immigrant. "We want more Americans to die so they can begin to see what it feels like."
All the tensions between France's Muslims, most from North Africa, and the rest of French society have bubbled into the open in the past month in the "banlieues," the working-class suburbs that sprawl around most French cities.
La Cite des 4,000 is the most notorious. Since Sept. 11, heavily armed police have become more visible. Moroccan and Algerian flags hang from apartment windows, placed there the day the bombing strikes on Afghanistan began. When news of the attack on the World Trade Center reached the projects, young men streamed out of the 15-story apartment blocks to shout in Arabic "God is Great!"
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