Impromptu memorials for the victims of Friday's terrorist attacks have been started all over Paris. Some mourners express both sorrow for the dead and concern over a potential backlash against French Muslims.
Olivier Corsan/Maxppp /Landov
In the wake of Friday's coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris, the French people — and supporters around the world — have been grieving. More than 120 people died in explosions and gunfire when well-coordinated teams of assailants struck at least six sites across the city.
Many Parisians have been traveling to the sites of the attacks to honor the dead. And for some mourners, there is concern as well as sorrow — worry that the attacks will lead to a backlash against Muslims in France.
'It Should Not Be Complicated'
In the trendy Canal St. Martin neighborhood, in the 10th arrondissement, gunmen opened fire on several packed restaurants and bars on Friday night. The next day, a steady throng of young Parisians arrived to pay their respects.
Among those huddling and holding hands, staring at the growing pile of flowers in front of the establishments' shattered windows, was 18-year-old Ryan Abeichou, a third-generation French Muslim whose grandparents came to Paris from Tunisia.
The informatics engineering major said he worries the latest attacks may turn a growing segment of French society against its Muslim citizens — including secular ones like himself — even though they are just as horrified and hurt by what happened, Abeichou said.
"It's going to be difficult for Muslims in France because some people will say it's their fault," he said, adding: "But I think it should not be complicated, because making that connection is wrong."
His 17-year-old friend Mathilde, who is a pre-med student, said that isn't keeping people from doing just that even at these impromptu memorial gatherings. She was visibly upset as she recounted the scene a short while earlier in front of the Bataclan Concert Hall, which saw the worst bloodshed in Friday night's attacks.
"It's shameful what they were saying, calling Muslims terrorists," she said, her hands shaking as she pulled a cigarette out of her purse.
'They're Trying To Scare The World'
In the 11th arrondissement, outside a pizza place where five people were gunned down in the attacks, Javier Valdeperez was laying flowers and lighting candles.
Valdeperez, whose parents are originally from Spain, said that unlike the Paris attacks in January, which targeted the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists as well as shoppers at a Jewish supermarket, these attacks seemed aimed at a diverse group of civilians with nothing in common with one another — except that they were enjoying themselves at a concert, a restaurant or a soccer game on a Friday night.
"[The attackers purposely] chose Friday night, and they chose this place full of young French people," Valdeperez said, gesturing toward the pizza place where people were killed. "When they attack and kill people, they're trying to scare the world. It's hard to prevent these kind of attacks."
He, too, said he fears the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe, and worries that France's far-right parties will try to capitalize on the attacks.
"This kind of act enables hate against people coming from Syria. [The far-right parties] are going to come out saying that there's no way to host people from these countries. It's going to be a surge of hate!" Valdeperez said. "We have to be careful of that. It doesn't represent Islam or the Muslims. It's just a bunch of psychopaths."
Ernest Hemingway once wrote "if you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." I was lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, and Hemingway, if only on this, was right.
So during the Paris attacks my heart broke watching helplessly as reports came from the scene of the Bataclan club massacre. One apparent club-goer, who was himself wounded, posted on Facebook that the terrorists were slaughtering people, "one by one."
If they did, President Obama's cowardly withdrawal from Iraq and refusal to enforce his own red line in Syria would not have led to Islamic State's rise in the first place – and the resultant surge of refugees into Europe, including, reportedly, at least one Paris attacker.
Yet President Obama would also have you believe that his limp and increasingly unpopular response to Islamic State has "contained" the jihadi army and kept it from "gaining strength," as he claimed literally hours before the Paris attacks.
Of course, he would also have you believe that climate change is a bigger threat than (Islamic) terror. He insists, "There's no greater threat to our planet than climate change." Well, Paris – and New Yorkon 9/11 and Beirut in 1983 and well, New York in 1993 and Beirut last week and Paris earlier this year – are trying over and over to teach us different. The truth is, and the Western world is united in believing it, here's no greater threat to our planet than Islamic jihad.
And here's where this matters to you. The Obama White House would also have you believe that the 10,000 Syrian refugees the president is in the process of bringing to America this year alone will "go through the most robust security process of anybody who's contemplating travel to the United States." Just last week, the administration acknowledged that it was bringing online refugee screening outposts in the Middle East to "push out really ambitious goals" to "increase the channels" for bringing Syrians to America.
Unfortunately, President Obama's own FBI director, James Comey, says the U.S. can't properly vet Syrians for ties to Islamic jihad. Likewise, the assistant director for the FBI, Michael Steinback, has told Congress that when it comes to Syrian refugees, "We don't have it under control."
"Absolutely, we're doing the best we can," he testified in February before the House. "If I were to say that we had it under control, then I would say I know of every single individual traveling. I don't. And I don't know every person there and I don't know everyone coming back. So it's not even close to being under control."
Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, who chairs the Senate Immigration and the National Interest subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, repeatedly asked Matthew Emrich, associate director of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to confirm or deny Mr. Steinback's claim that Syrian refugees were "clearly a population of concern" and that U.S. databases don't have information on them. Emmrich eventually fell silent.
However, in a sadly goofy way, so did little Martin Richard, the boy killed in the Boston Marathon Bombing by Chechen refugees. In fact, refugees and asylees have played key roles in terror activities from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to the ongoing flow of al-Shabab recruits from Minnesota.
And it will get worse if we ignore the threat, as Paris suggests. "Just wait," says an Islamic State group operative, who claims that ISIS has successfully smuggled 4,000 jihadis into Europe hidden among refugees. More to come – in Paris, and if we make the mistake of believing our president, here as well.
So what is to be done?
First, we need to acknowledge that the Ted Kennedy-drafted 1980 law that governs refugee resettlement was, like his 1965 Immigration Act and the Immigration Act of 1990, designed more tomaximize the influx of potential Democrats to the United States than to keep it secure in the face of an enemy like the global Islamic jihad.
So, second, Congress should include in the omnibus spending bill required by December 11, 2015some variation of Texas GOP Rep. Brian Babin's Refugee Accountability National Security Act, which would place a moratorium on refugee resettlement until Congress deems the program has been adequately reviewed, as well as a Government Accountability Office audit of its costs. Even simply defunding all refugee resettlement from Syria would be a start, though the problem of jihadis posing as refugees extends far beyond Syria.
Third, Congress should pass and President Obama should sign the bill sponsored by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, which would restore control over how many refugees the U.S. admits each year to the legislative branch, where it belongs.
Fourth, Congress should pass and President Obama should sign the bill sponsored by Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Florida GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization, just as have Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and arguably even Syria.
Fifth, the U.S. should militarize its southern border. Attempts to "secure the border" started as early as the late 1800s and have by and large failed. After 9/11, however, George W. Bush ordered 6,000 national guardsmen to the border to at long last seal it for security reasons. Yet as the 2004 elections approached, Bush, who favored immigration expansion for political and business interest reasons, gradually relaxed his grip on the border. President Obama, who favored it to pack the country with left-leaning voters, has literally broken the law to bring people across the border and keep them in the country. Today we have what Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, then acting commander of the U.S. Southern Command, called an "existential" threat to America.
Sixth, the president (and this could not possibly be Barack Obama) should unite the world around a hard-nosed, realist foreign policy that supports Western civilization's allies and devastates its enemies – not just in what we now think of as Syria and Iraq, the source of the current refugee tidal wave, but around the world.
Finally, Congress should pass comprehensive immigration reform – and not the amnesty that both the U.S. Chamber and the Democratic Party use that term to describe. A real reform that would:
Reverse the Obama administration's suicidal (not to mention illegal) decision to unilaterally change the law to allow in immigrants with "limited" terror contact
Eliminate funding for the so-called voluntary agencies which have turned into lobbies to expand the number of refugees ad infinitum
Give the U.S. control over whom we deem a refugee, not the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which has a rotten record that has led some to speculate about how closely it cooperates with the Organization of Islamic Countries.
Follow the lead of then-Sen. Joe Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, who once proposedeliminating citizenship for those who join foreign terror organizations
Likewise, end the practice of having anchor babies that those who otherwise disdain and ignore the Constitution incorrectly call the constitutional guarantee of "birthright citizenship," and which Obama has stood on its head by granting illegal amnesty to parents of these tiny citizens
Finally, let's give those from native English speaking countries higher priority in immigration law. They put less of a strain on schools, do better over the long term and, well, are less likely to kill us: 83 percent of alleged terrorist attacks take place outside of native English-speaking countries.
That's a pretty hefty agenda. To even move in that direction, here's one thing that we as a nation – and the entire Western World – must do before anything else: acknowledge that we are in a war with Islamic jihadis who want us dead for ideological reasons and will stop at nothing to kill us.
Otherwise, not only my favorite city will continue to face an ever-greater risk of senseless slaughter at the hands of blood-thirsty Islamic jihadis.
The deadly Paris attacks are putting pressure on President Obama to confront Islamic State militants more aggressively than he has been willing to consider in the past, opening a difficult deliberation for a leader who has tried to build a legacy on ending America's wars, not extending them.
On Sunday, Obama pledged to “redouble our efforts” to fight international terrorism after the brutal bombings and shootings that killed at least 129 people in the French capital.
Obama mentioned fortifying borders and continuing diplomatic talks, but that strategy is likely to evolve and get tougher as world leaders gather in Turkey for the annual Group of 20 economic summit — an event transformed by the terrorist strikes into an emergency strategy session on combating Islamic State.
After a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan here Sunday morning, Obama condemned the mass killings as “an attack on the civilized world” and pledged to “stand in solidarity” with French authorities as they hunt down the perpetrators.
The attacks have created a new level of anxiety among European and Middle Eastern leaders as they watch Islamic State extend its ambitions beyond Iraq and Syria to target enemies internationally.
The Paris attacks came just a few days after the bombing of a Shiite Muslim district of Beirut and two weeks after the sudden crash of a Russian airliner. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for all three events, which targeted elements that have been fighting Islamic State on what it views as its home turf.
World leaders are looking again to the U.S. for leadership in the campaign to defeat the militant group. Erdogan is just one of the regional partners who wants the U.S. to send in more ground troops and special operations forces to help coordinate airstrikes.
Others are pushing for a no-fly zone to stop air operations by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Supporters of the move say it would protect Syrian civilians and demonstrate that the West remains committed to defeating the Syrian dictator, thereby undercutting a powerful Islamic State recruiting narrative.
Obama has been resistant to the idea of sinking more deeply into the Syrian civil war, but there are signs that approach could be changing. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter vowed to his French counterpart that the U.S. would take “additional steps” to respond to the Paris attacks.
But after a morning of meetings, White House officials also made it clear that they plan to prod coalition members to do more of what they had already pledged to do within the context of the existing strategy against Islamic State. The administration expects “some of our allies, including France, to intensify their efforts” and allocate more resources toward the coalition strategy, deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters in Antalya on Sunday.
With some intelligence help from the U.S., French warplanes hit Islamic State targets in Syria on Sunday night, the start of what the French government promises will be a stepped-up military campaign.
Obama still doesn’t think that more U.S. troops are the answer to the problem, Rhodes said. Instead, the situation calls for a “more sustainable opposition force on the ground in Syria and partners in Iraq,” he said.
With an invasion force off the table, the other options are mainly to continue bombing and targeting terrorist leaders while waiting for the Kurds and Syrian forces to get strong enough to tackle Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.
It was not immediately clear what additional steps Carter meant, but they probably would include intelligence-sharing and closer coordination, such as the assistance offered in Sunday’s retaliatory strike by French warplanes.
Frederic C. Hof, a former special advisor to Obama on Syria who now is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, said the U.S. may need to consider mounting a ground offensive with Western European support to go after Islamic State in Syria. He said the militants cannot be defeated by only an air campaign.
“These horrific attacks and ISIS' claim of responsibility suggest that the administration may have to go back to the drawing board on its assumption that the battle against this organization must, by definition, be a long one,” he said. “ISIS in its Syrian headquarters needs to be taken down, and quickly.”
Friday's attacks also “raise hard questions for us and France about how this went undiscovered,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, in a phone interview Saturday after a briefing by U.S. intelligence officials. He added that the intelligence agencies are reviewing the information they had leading up to the attack in order to see whether any signs were missed.
If the Paris attacks turn out to have been directed by Islamic State's central leadership, it would mark a “big change” in the group's strategy, said William McCants, an expert on Islamic extremism at the Brookings Institution.
Islamic State has focused on state-building in Iraq and Syria in the last year and “has not dedicated a lot of resources to external operations,” McCants said in an interview. Most Islamic State attacks outside the region up until now have been carried out by affiliated groups or individuals who were inspired to act by Islamic State propaganda.
“The calculation has been, by the U.S. and other governments, that as long as Islamic State focuses on state-building in Iraq, it is enough to contain them,” McCants said. “But if Islamic State has begun successful large-scale external attacks, I think it will increase the popular demand for much larger-scale interventions.”
Much of the pressure could come from European allies.
“France has declared this an act of war,” said James Jeffrey, a former ambassador in both Turkey and Iraq and now an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I do not think [French President Francois] Hollande's response will be to continue his minor air force contribution to Obama's very cautious limited containment campaign.”
“Hollande,” he added, “will not just go along with Obama's game plan.”
Obama heard from other world leaders Sunday as European and Middle East heads of state gathered for a day of meetings. He met with Saudi King Salman, an emergency get-together announced after the Paris attacks.
On Monday he will hold a previously scheduled meeting with European allies to talk about fighting Islamic State as well as dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s moves in Syria and Ukraine.
White House officials counted it a minor step forward that Obama met for half an hour Sunday with Putin in a pull-aside chat at the G-20. The two “agreed on the need for a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition” that would come after a cease-fire and negotiations mediated by the United Nations, according to a White House written account of the conversation.
Obama said he “welcomes efforts by all nations” to confront Islamic State and noted the importance of Russia's military efforts in Syria focusing on the group, an aide wrote.
At home, federal law enforcement agencies are stepping up their surveillance efforts of potential Islamic States operatives, growing increasingly concerned that after the Paris attacks and a plane bombing in Egypt that the militant group may next strike in the United States.
According to two federal law enforcement officials on Sunday, the FBI is enhancing its wiretap efforts and other surveillance programs in an attempt to follow potential suspects through their phone and Internet networks.
Parsons reported from Antalya and Hennigan and Bennett from Washington. Times staff writers Richard A. Serrano and Katherine Skiba in Washington contributed to this report.
France is committed to "destroying" the so-called Islamic State group after Friday's deadly attacks, President Francois Hollande has said.
He said he would table a bill to extend the state of emergency declared after the attacks for three months and would suggest changes to the constitution.
France's military campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria will also intensify.
IS says it carried out the attacks on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and a stadium in which 129 people died.
Speaking during a joint session of both houses of parliament, Mr Hollande said the constitution needed to be amended as "we need an appropriate tool we can use without having to resort to the state of emergency".
Other measures he said would be pursued included:
5,000 extra police posts in the next two years and no new cuts in the defence budget
Making it easier to strip dual nationals of their French citizenship if they are convicted of a terrorist offence, as long as this did not render them stateless
Speeding up the deportation of foreigners who pose "a particularly grave threat to the security of the nation"
Pushing for greater European action against arms trafficking and greater penalties for it in France
Image copyrightReutersImage captionThe Eiffel Tower was lit in the colours of the French flag in a tribute to the victims
Mr Hollande said he would travel to meet US President Barack Obama and Russian Vladimir Putin in the coming days to discuss action against the group.
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Paris on Monday evening to show support for "America's oldest friend" against what he called "psychopathic monsters".
At a G20 summit in Turkey, world leaders promised tighter co-operation in the wake of the attacks.
Mr Obama said the US and France had made a new agreement on intelligence sharing but said US military advisers thought sending ground troops to combat Isis would be a mistake.
In his address, Mr Hollande reiterated his opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad remaining in power but said "our enemy in Syria is Daesh [IS]".
He promised more resources for the security forces and said the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier would be sent on Thursday to bolster the military campaign against IS.
On Sunday night, French aircraft attacked Raqqa, IS's stronghold in Syria. French officials said 10 jets had dropped 20 guided bombs targeting sites including a command centre, a recruitment centre for jihadists, a munitions depot and a training camp.
IS has issued a statement saying the raid targeted empty locations and that there were no casualties.
Analysis: Hugh Schofield, BBC News, Paris
This was a solemn speech in which one felt the president genuinely striving - under the weight of appalling circumstance - to give service to the nation.
He knows that the people expect a riposte. He said it would come in two forms: military and judicial.
In Syria there will be intensified strikes, and new co-ordination with the US and Russia.
In France there will be a three-month extension of the state of emergency; more police and magistrates; possible powers to strip dual nationals of French citizenship.
There will also be a reform of the constitution - creating a new status short of all-out war in which exceptional powers can be handed to police.
But President Hollande is better at empathy than at talking tough. His opponents will give him slack because today no-one wants to expose dissent.
But are these measures really going to be enough? Or are they just more administrative knob-twiddling, when the people feel in deadly peril?
Media captionMariesha Payne was inside the Bataclan: "We ran to the back of the cellar and crammed ourselves in the smallest space"Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage captionThousand of extra police and troops have been deployed in Paris
Authorities say that one of the attackers was the same man who used a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad al-Mohammad and whose fingerprints match those taken by the Greek authorities after he arrived with migrants on the island of Leros in October.
One Greek official on the island told the BBC that the man had aroused suspicion when he arrived and said that more highly trained intelligence officers might have been able to apprehend him.
As well as the attackers themselves, investigators are also reported to be focusing on a Belgian of Moroccan descent who is described as the possible mastermind of the attacks.
Abdelhamid Abaoud, 27, lived in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, as did two of the attackers, and is now believed to be based in Syria, where he has risen through the ranks of IS.
In the early hours of Monday, a total of 23 people were arrested, 104 put under house arrest, and dozens of weapons seized in more than 168 raids on suspected Islamist militants across France.
Belgian police say two people arrested on Saturday were charged on Monday with "participating in a terrorist attack".
They were among seven people detained in Belgium at the weekend.
Five of them were later released, including Mohammed Abdeslam, the brother of two suspects - Brahim Abdeslam, killed during the attacks, and Salah Abdeslam, who is on the run.
Suspected Paris attackers
Salah Abdeslam, 26 - urgently sought by police
Brahim Abdeslam, 31 - named as attacker who died near Bataclan concert hall
Omar Ismail Mostefai, 29, from near Paris - died in attack on Bataclan
Bilal Hadfi, 20 - named as attacker who died at Stade de France
Ahmad al-Mohammad, 25, from Idlib, Syria - died at Stade de France (unverified)
Samy Amimour, 28, from near Paris - suicide bomber at Bataclan
Two other attackers died during the assaults in the city
Mohammed Abdeslam emerged from his house to speak to the media on Monday and said his family did not know where Salah is.
Stressing his innocence, he said the family's thoughts were "with the families of the victims".
"We are moved by what happened, at no point we could have thought that my brothers were involved in this but you must understand that we have a mother and he is still her son," he said.
"We noticed absolutely nothing, my two brothers were just normal. We still don't know exactly what happened."
Among those attackers identified
France held a nationwide minute of silence at midday local time (11:00 GMT) for the victims, led by Mr Hollande at the Sorbonne University. The silence was also observed in countries across the continent.
