Even by the bloody standards of what France has become under Emmanuel Macron, the carnage last week was horrific. In Poitiers, a shootout left five youths seriously wounded, one of whom died of his injuries at the weekend. In Rennes, a 5-year-old remains in a serious state after being hit in the head by a stray bullet.
In Valence, a 22-year-old man was shot dead and two others wounded as they queued outside a nightclub for a Halloween party on Thursday night; the following day an 18-year-old was gunned down and killed in a suburb of the same town. In Villeurbanne, a suburb of Lyon, a man was shot dead, and in Clermont-Ferrand a teenage is in a critical condition after receiving a bullet in the head.
Barely a day goes by when Retailleau is not confronted by what he calls the “Mexicanisation” of France
The 22-year-old who was killed outside the nightclub in Valence has been named as Nicolas, a member of the Romans-Péage rugby club. This was also the club to which 16-year-old Thomas belonged; he was fatally stabbed 12 months ago by a group of youths who gatecrashed his village dance, reportedly looking to ‘kill a white’.
In response to the death of Nicolas, the local mayor Marie-Hélène Thoraval wrote: ‘A whole town has been devastated by this latest tragedy, the result of a barbaric, gratuitous and totally senseless act’. What is so disturbing about this barbarity is that it occurs in ‘la belle France’, far away from Paris and Marseille, the cities where violence has been rife for much of this century.
The common thread to the shootings is drugs. In the last few years, the cartels in Marseille and Paris have expanded their business into every department and just about every town in France.
With the drugs come guns, sometimes 9mm automatic pistols but more often than not Kalashnikov assault rifles, smuggled into France from eastern Europe. One can be bought, along with 1,000 rounds of ammunition, for €1,500 (£1,260). ‘In Marseille, you can buy a Kalashnikov, just like you buy a pain au chocolat,’ said the city’s mayor, Benoit Payan. Fifty people were shot dead in Marseille last year, many killed by a burst from a Kalashnikov. Police seized 105 of these guns, fifty per cent more than in 2022.
The man being hunted in connection with the shooting in Poitiers on Thursday evening was arrested in 2022 for possession of two pump-action shotguns and a Kalashnikov. According to Bruno Retailleau, the Minister of the Interior, the trouble ‘started off with a shooting at a restaurant. It ended up with a clash between rival gangs which involved several hundred people’.
Retailleau has only been in his post a matter of weeks but barely a day goes by when he is not confronted by what he himself now calls the ‘Mexicanisation’ of France. This is not political hyperbole. It is reality. As the violence grows, so does the corruption.
According to Retailleau, France has reached a ‘tipping point’ and consequently the Republic has a choice: ‘Full mobilisation or the “Mexicanisation” of the country…these shootouts aren’t happening in South America, they’re happening in Rennes, in Poitiers.’
While Retailleau has public opinion on his side, he may struggle to win over much of the French elite, whose philosophy has for years been ‘soft on crime and soft on the causes of the crime’. This was illustrated by one public broadcaster describing Retailleau at the weekend as ‘a hardliner on security issues’. It’s a curious world when a minister alarmed by 5-year-olds being shot in the head is portrayed as a ‘hardliner’.
But therein lies the reason why France increasingly resembles Mexico: four decades of ‘softliners’, politicians, judges and journalists who have turned a blind eye to the violence and corruption. The television headlines last week were dominated by the floods in Spain and not the young men being shot dead on their streets.
Rennes has been decaying for a while, and last year a local newspaper revealed the ‘hell’ that life had become on some estates. ‘The problem has been going on for several years,’ said a spokesperson for one housing association. ‘Like the residents, we’re also sounding the alarm because we’ve been suffering this situation for a long time, and unfortunately it’s not an isolated case in Rennes.’
But the hell continues. Earlier this year, as many as twelve gunmen fought a running battle for more than an hour on the streets of Rennes. Politicians reacted with solemn declarations about restoring order, but the shooting of the 5-year-old last week shows the hollowness of their rhetoric.
This is not a new scourge in France. The 1971 Oscar-winning film, The French Connection, told the story of a heroin-smuggling syndicate operating out of Marseille. It was very much based on reality, to the anger of president Richard Nixon who, on becoming president of the USA in 1969, demanded that his French counterpart, Charles de Gaulle, crack down on the city’s heroin factories. The French government declined. ‘It’s your problem, not ours,’ said Raymond Marcellin, the Interior Minister between 1968 and 1974. The new drugs scourge – cannabis from Morocco and cocaine from south America – is most definitely France’s problem.
‘Just as we’ve made terrorism a national cause, we need to make the fight, the war, the battle against narcobanditism a real national cause,’ declared Retailleau, speaking after the shooting in Poitiers. On Sunday, one of Emmanuel Macron’s centrist MPs called for the army to be sent into some cities to restore order, while Retailleau backs the idea of deploying reservists from the gendarmerie. Among other intended measures are tougher sentences for consumers and also closer co-operation with Morocco, from where much of the drugs – and the dealers – hail. Retailleau was in Morocco last week to discuss the issue and declared himself satisfied with what was agreed.
France’s war against Islamist terrorism began in January 2015, after the shooting of the Charlie Hebdo staff, and it is still ongoing. The war against the drug cartels promises to be just as long, and probably just as bloody.
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