Nice // In its heart of hearts, France had a good idea something like the Nice massacre was bound to happen sooner or later.
Atrocities in Madrid, London, Paris, Brussels and elsewhere in Europe in recent years, as well as in Lebanon, Iraq, Mali, Kenya, Bangladesh among so many locations targeted by terrorists, have produced a new state of painful resignation. The fear generated by each murderous attack knows few borders.
ISIL, even more than Al Qaeda and earlier extremist groups, has turned much of the world into one that is having to become accustomed to the inevitability of mass-casualty atrocities. As it loses ground in combat zones, it seeks to export terror as widely as possible.
France has suffered grievously, more than any other European country, in the past 19 months. The Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris in January 2015 were followed 11 months later by the slaughter of November 13, 130 people killed on Parisian cafe terraces, outside the Stade de France and in the Bataclan concert hall.
Other, smaller-scale attacks have occurred in France and been claimed by or on behalf of ISIL terrorists, most recently the murder of two police officers, husband and wife, at their home in Magnanville, 50 kilometres west of Paris, in June. Other plots have been foiled, the would-be perpetrators detained before they could carry out intended crimes.
France congratulated itself on getting through the Euro 2016 football tournament without serious incident beyond the clashes between football supporters, mostly English and Russian.
But no one doubted that home-grown or imported extremists, with guidance from ISIL commanders in Syria or merely observing the terror group’s general rallying cry to supporters overseas to devise their own operations, wished to strike France again, and hard.
There were reports in spring that intelligence officers had uncovered evidence of plans to infiltrate ice-cream and soft-drinks companies, whose seasonally employed staff wheel trolleys up and down popular holiday beaches, to launch attacks on sunbathers reminiscent of the massacre at the resort of Port El Kantaoui, 10 kilometres north of the Tunisian city of Sousse.
Hours before the president, Francois Hollande, talked on Thursday, in the head of state’s traditional television interview marking Bastille Day, a symbol of the nation’s fundamental tenets of liberté, egalité, fraternité (freedom, equality and brotherhood), it was possible to feel unease.
Mr Hollande spoke of ending the state of emergency in force since the November 13 attacks – a decision reversed in the light of Thursday’s massacre – but in truth, few feel wholly safe in France since the Charlie Hebdo killings changed the nature of the terrorist threat 19 months ago.
In troubled times, a big Bastille night concert beneath the Eiffel Tower seemed to present one potential target. Happily, that event passed off without incident, though a nearby lorry fire caused short-lived concern.
In the event, a French-Tunisian petty criminal chose Nice’s version of the day of national celebrations. The dense crowds gathered for a fireworks display on the Promenade des Anglais, the world-famous long seafront avenue of France’s fifth city, presented an easy target.
The victims, young and old, holidaymakers and locals in family groups or with friends, had little chance as a man, named as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, described by Tunisian media as a native of a town near Sousse, climbed into his 19-tonne hired lorry, broke through a barrier into the pedestrianised section of the avenue and mounted the pavements to mow them down.
There was incredulity in the elegant, sunny resort yesterday at the notion that one Nicois’, albeit an adopted one, would willingly slaughter so many others. Lahouaiej Bouhlel lived alone in a first-floor apartment in the Abattoirs quarter of the city just three kilometres from the seafront, where his journey of savagery ended in the deaths of 84 innocents, followed by his own as he staged a gunfight with police.
In yesterday’s warm sunshine, even those parts of the promenade not closed off as police and forensic experts continued their investigations had a sombre look. There were holidaymakers out taking strolls but the mood was subdued. Many seafront businesses, including hotels and restaurants, were closed. Staff in others talked of a “human wave” of panicking crowds dispersing down side streets and taking cover in their premises the night before. Some of those survivors broke down in tears as they told reporters of seeing people, children included, crushed under the lorry’s wheels, of still not knowing whether individuals they saw “between life and death” had survived.
Where the lorry had ploughed into the crowds, causing such heavy loss of life, debris was still visible: twisted crush barriers, upturned rubbish bins, discarded shoes and other personal effects.
Some people who had escaped the massacre returned, either to lay flowers or to stand in silent groups, contemplating the catastrophe that had turned a joyful occasion into a war scene, killing and wounding people of many nationalities. Social media was alive with messages of sympathy – but also bitter condemnation of those who had posted distressing, graphic images of the dead and wounded on Thursday night.
But above all, there was anger at the individual who caused the bloodshed and any group or other person who may have put him up to it.
“I am ashamed as a Tunisian of this revolting, cowardly and intolerable act of barbarity,” said Ridha Louafi, a French resident since the 1980s and president of the Cote d’Azur Association of Tunisians. “Tunisians and other Maghrebins are among the victims, too, and they are casualties twice over because of the way people will now regard them, as if they were somehow responsible for the terrible actions of one individual.”
French political leaders talk nobly of a great democracy refusing to flinch in the wake of another attack on its people and its values.
Chillingly, other voices speak in darker terms. Officials say between 1,000 and 2,000 inmates in French prisons may present a security threat because of their extremist views or connections. Many more, including those who have returned from combat with ISIL in Syria and Iraq, are at large, too many for police to have a realistic chance of keeping them all under constant surveillance. Security sources said in June, as the Euros got under way, that 25 known suspects had disappeared “off the radar” in France.
And ISIL sympathisers are not the only threat. A French man with extreme right-wing sympathies was arrested in Ukraine in early June on suspicion of having planning anti-Islam attacks in France, on dates including tournament matchdays.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that Patrick Calvar, chief of the Directorate General of Internal Security, had told members of the French parliamentary commission the country, along with much of Europe, was on the brink of civil war.
He said far-right elements were suspected of stockpiling weapons and explosives and suggested France was perhaps only one or two further terrorist outrages away from a violent backlash.
Whatever part Nice’s Bloody Thursday will be shown to have played, it is the outcome that ISIL – constantly seeking to drive a wedge between Muslim and other communities – would dearly like to see.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
