For insight into why France is increasingly worried about large sections of its society becoming fertile turf for jihadist recruiters, the southern town of Lunel offers a singular example.
On Tuesday, five people were arrested in Lunel by authorities investigating the departure of about 20 residents from the suburban Montpellier town to join Islamic fighters in Syria.
Since October last year, six have been killed in Syria or Iraq, French authorities said.
Photo: AFP
The relatively large number of jihadist recruits from the small southern town of just 26,000 people has made Lunel an outsized example of the security threat that the entire nation faces — one France became acutely aware of following the terrorist attacks in Paris from Jan. 7 to Jan. 9 that left 17 people dead.
Founded by Jews from Jericho in the first century, Lunel was classified in 2013 as one of the towns where enforcement of law and order has become a priority. Meanwhile, Lunel’s 20 percent unemployment rate is nearly double the national average.
Despite that, the town does not compare particularly badly to most disaffected suburbs surrounding major French cities.
Joblessness in Lunel is below the 25 percent average in most blighted “banlieues” — France’s grim, high-rise suburbs where low-income families (often of immigrant origin) languish amid joblessness, discrimination and simmering social tensions at the margins of mainstream society.
Youth unemployment in many banlieues, which have been hotbeds of recruitment for Syria, is close to 50 percent.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls recently likened the conditions suffered by minorities to South Africa’s apartheid era.
However, if many of the people who left Lunel to wage jihad in the last two years fit the alienated and excluded profile of their nearly 1,400 French peers who have taken the same path, others proved that not all aspiring jihadist recruits are fleeing hopeless situations.
One Lunel recruit was a computer science student, another a mason and yet another a cafe manager. Several left for Syria with their wives and children in tow.
The arrest on Tuesday of five people in the area on suspicion they abetted or organized recruitment might provide clues as to why Lunel has been particularly affected by the jihadist problem.
French Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve said the level of extremist activity in Lunel was in no way different to the threat the rest of France was facing.
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