By Bérengère Greenland and Hannah Ross-McAlpine
A little over a month
ago, the head-quarters of a small newspaper in Paris was attacked by radicals.
Armed with AKs, two brothers, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, killed 12 people
including members of the redaction team, police officers and civilians. The
next day, an accomplice killed a police women in the north of Paris and a day
later took hostages in a kosher supermarket and killed four Jews. In total, 17
people were killed during three days of terror attacks. The Kouachi brothers
claimed to be affiliated to Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the
Yemeni group later declared responsibility for the attacks.
The Kouachi brothers
were both French nationals, born in Paris in the 1980s. While they had a
difficult childhood, they were not very different from many youths in France.
So how did they become radicalised? Hundreds of young men and women in Europe
are leaving for Syria to fight with IS and other radical groups, this has
become a pressing issue and one that desperately needs a solution.
The Kouachis were born in
France in the early 1980s to an Algerian family with 5 children. Their father was absent, and alone their mother struggled to make ends meet. They lived in the north of Paris in a low
socio–economic suburb and with high levels of criminality, in other words a
ghetto. In 1995, their mother died, a presumed suicide. The boys, now orphaned,
were put through French social services. They moved to the French country-side
where they received a normal French education.
Most witnesses have asserted
that the Kouachi brothers were very normal youths. They participated in sports
clubs and completed qualifications that would facilitate integration in the
work force and society.
In the early 2000s
however, the brothers moved back to Paris and it’s then that the younger
brother, Chérif Kouachi started interacting with the self-proclaimed ‘Emir’
Farid Benyettou. Farid Benyettou led an organisation that indoctrinated young
men and sent them to fight with Al Qaida in Iraq against the American invader. Chérif
was set to fly to Iraq in January 2005 but he, Benyettou and all his associates
were arrested before he could fly out. Chérif admitted to his lawyer that he
was relieved not to have been sent to Iraq. He was certain that if he had gone there he would never have come back. His lawyer also says that at the time Chérif
was quite a normal young man who drank alcohol, smoked and had a girlfriend. Other witnesses however argued that while he was reluctant
to fight in Iraq, he was a fervent supporter of an attack on French soil,
especially against the Jewish community and that he was only waiting for
permission to start jihad in France.[1]
While in prison from November
2005 to September 2006, Chérif met Djamal Beghal, an important figure of radical
Islam in France. Beghal was sentenced to 10 years in prison for preparing an
attack on French soil. It was supposedly under Beghal’s influence that Chérif
radicalised and started adopting a more rigorous practice of Islam.
But while Chérif was a
known jihadist in France, his brother Saïd was much more discrete. He was
however known by the American secret services for having trained in weaponry in
Yemen and both men were on the US no fly list.
The radicalisation of
young Muslims is a pressing issue for many countries in Europe and the Kouachi
brothers are a good example of the process through which radicalisation takes
hold. Often they are young men who have grown up in economically deprived areas
where petty crime is prevalent. They have European nationalities and in many
cases their families have lived in Europe for a number of generations. But
often because of social barriers they feel they don’t fit into mainstream
European society.
They practise a kind of
Islam that idolises soldiers who have fought and died to protect their faith.
Heroic figures such as the Mujahedeen that have taken on foreign invaders and
travelled to areas such as Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan to join radical groups
and take part in the fighting. It is heroes such as these that inspire young
men like the Kouachi brothers and create a sense of purpose and belonging that mainstream
French society failed to provide. The perceived exclusion the Kouachi brothers
experienced made them susceptible to radicalisation. It is this radicalisation
that widened the divide between themselves and their perceived oppressor, France.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo was not only a move against a publication
considered blasphemous but an attack on the fundamental French value of freedom
of expression.
[1] http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/enquete/charlie-hebdo-qui-sont-les-deux-freres-recherches-par-la-police_1638537.html