EUROPE	FEBRUARY 2, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 5
	Crisis Sweeps the Cites France's urban ghettos rumble with discontent as alienated residents burn cars and flout authority By BRUCE CRUMLEY /PARIS asty, brutish and shorn of much of the social safety net enjoyed by the population at large, France's suburban cites are a ticking urban time bomb. Encircling most of the major cities, these blighted neighborhoods, called banlieues, are home to a disaffected, increasingly isolated demi-monde consisting largely of immigrants and French citizens of African and Arab descent. "Nobody cares about the suburbs--we're left to rot out here," says Moustapha Boujemoui, 17, from the Paris suburb of St. Denis. "There are no jobs, there's no money, there's no hope. No wonder cars burn and people rampage: it's the only time anyone pays attention to us." Recently France has had no choice but to pay attention. On New Year's Eve, youths from the suburbs around Strasbourg burned more than 100 cars and vandalized schools. Just before Christmas, youths in the suburbs of Lyon burned cars when a local resident died in police custody. At the same time similar violence flared in the Parisian outer suburb of Dammarie-les-Lys after a youth was shot to death by police. Those riots may have put the suburbs firmly on the political agenda, but so far solutions seem a long way off, despite Jacques Chirac's election promise of a "Marshall Plan" for the suburbs. Last week, Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement met with 350 mayors from communes hit by youth violence and promised to bolster police forces and augment suburban security details. But stepped-up policing is not the answer, says Nicole Le Guennec, a University of Paris sociologist specializing in the disaffected suburbs. "Our society," she says, "has never been able to offer any durable solutions to the problems residents of these areas face. We listen to their demands and throw money at them when they burn cars or riot. But little out there ever improves." Public housing projects in most suburbs are towering eyesores rapidly falling into disrepair. Communal and sports facilities--those that have escaped vandals--no longer accommodate fast-growing populations. School standards have plummeted. For many residents a sense of helplessness is mixed with anger. "In Paris you can ride a horse, or play tennis, but try finding a single tennis court in a suburb," says Zair Kedadouche, a professor of urban policy at the Institute of Political Science in Paris. "In the cities, anything is possible, while in the suburbs, you feel like nothing is." When it comes to finding work, racism and other prejudices put cite dwellers at a double disadvantage, says Nicole Smadja, head of the Ile de France region's urban affairs taskforce. "If you put an address in the suburbs on an application for a job, forget it." With adult unemployment in the cites nearly double the national average of 12.4% and unemployment approaching 50% for those under the age of 25, jobs are clearly the key. "Let us put some money in our pockets, and cars will stop burning," says David Marechal, a 17-year-old participant in a job training program in St. Denis. "Nobody in the suburbs wants to be angry or destructive; we have to be able to hope." But in the meantime anger and crime are on the increase. Although crime rates fell in France last year, the number of violent crimes by younger people increased, due in large part to surging juvenile delinquency in the suburbs, where criminals start their careers as early as eight or nine. Cite violence has become so bad that many ambulance and fire services refuse to respond to calls unless accompanied by police escorts--a hesitancy that increases the sense of abandonment among residents. Attacks on other municipal employees are also up--aimed, it seems, at punishing the representatives of those who have forsaken the suburbs. "You don't have to be a cop," says bus driver Sylvain Leclerc, 35, who often works suburban Paris routes. "With a uniform on you represent authority." Some local politicians are proposing fines for parents of young repeat offenders, and a handful of France's 509 officially designated "sensitive" cities and communes have passed 10 p.m. curfews for children under 12. That may help, but may not go far enough, according to Idrissa Coulibaly, 33, a St. Denis sports coach for younger children. "These kids have no confidence in themselves, and have lost a lot of respect for their parents," he says. "You have to teach them they are somebody, and that somebodies have to think about other people, and tomorrow." But regaining self-respect will require suburbanites to acquire a renewed esteem for their own neighborhoods and a sense of belonging to society at large--neither of which seems likely to come about any time soon. Still, jobs could help. Attacking cops and bus drivers, Kedadouche notes, is harder to do if they are brothers or neighbors. But with jobs in short supply everywhere, what chance have the cites?
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