a tumultuous period of six months. Those uprooted travelled by train, bus, by their cars and taxis, others made their journey by plane and by boat, some even made their journey by foot.
Algharb had taken on an appearance of what Ennis imagined Tangiers must have look like a century ago, a hive of cosmopolitan activity and conspiracy.
La France
The insecurity developed in spite of the repressive measures taken by the government, the dream of every Parisian was to be as far away as possible from the city and its inner suburbs so that life was as agreeable as possible, where they could relax and enjoy a little silence and fresh air, far from the noise and pollution of the traffic, and not the least a population that was so far removed from the mid-twentieth century that many quarters of the capital had become totally unrecognisable.
Each morning and evening they faced a long haul into and out of their work places situated in and around Paris. In the stations and on the streets they rubbed shoulders with the hordes of Clodos and lost youth of all kinds, infiltrators recently arrived from the tumult in North Africa but those from the border regions beyond East and South Eastern Europe, young men who had fled the misery of Nova Rossiya and the wars that burst into flame every now and then as minorities fought for self determination against oppressive states that struggled to contain the disorder that menaced their existence.
Feeble efforts were made to enforce laws forbidding the Clodos from squatting the public parks and garden, begging and vagabondage was forbidden, a few infiltrators were expelled when their country of origin could be determined.
The government slowly lost control, totally disconnected from the everyday reality of the population. Opportunist and populist politicians gained a foothold. It was a common event to see mainstream politicians and their parties were mired in scandals linked to scandals from influence peddling to financial corruption.
The National Front slowly gained a degree of respectability as it preached its nationalistic ideas. On the periphery of the cities and large towns millions of people lived in housing estates and districts without services, without shops, cafés or cinemas, people who lived in fear once night had fallen, in fear of aggression and in fear of burglary.
The housing estates and inner suburban districts became lawless centres where the police feared to tread, where crime and drug trafficking reigned and unemployment levels exceeded fifty percent.
It was in these cities that another form of order slowly took hold as schools and parental discipline failed. The major part of the population in those areas was Neo; those French who could fled. The Neos and Settlers from North Africa, Sahel Africa, Turkey and Central Asia were Muslims. Their Imams established mosques and prayer halls, founded Koranic associations and opened Koranic schools and sponsored sports centres. They preached Islamic values and rejected the secular state.
The political leaders of France were terrified to address the problem, they simply plunged their heads in the sand through fear of being accused as racists leaving the mullahs the freedom to do what was forbidden for Christians in their countries of origin, or fear of provoking the ire of the Neo population.
The North African civil wars with their terror overflowed into France as the Islamist and Traditionalists struggled against the established regimes, the politico-military establishment in Algeria, the royalists in Morocco and the more paternalistic dictatorship in Tunisia.
Opposing groups led their terror campaigns in the large cities of France, they fought each other, they fought against the French declaring that if they were not with them they were against them, the used all the arms of terror, human bombs, car bombs, bombs in trains and cafés, attacks on police stations.
They brought their vast experience of terror and guerrilla warfare from North Africa and the Middle East, they organised themselves in autonomous cells, they were trained and disciplined. They were blind to all reason, their objective was victory, but for what it was not exactly clear, their ideas were certainly guided by Allah, but their ultimate demands were vague though many sought a paradise on earth and not in heaven. It was with the Insurgency they realised that they could attain what they had not dreamt of, a land of Islamic haven on the Mediterranean coast of the European Federation.
They extremists were joined by their more pragmatic brothers in the inner suburbs who had identified with their heroes, who had fought against the Israelis against the military governments in North Africa and who did not hesitate to defy the powerful French state to defend their rights. It would be a vengeance against the French who had rejected them relegating them to second class citizens, deliverers of pizzas, lowly factory workers, cleaners, resigned to a life of petty crime in order to survive, banished to the ghettos and poor inner suburbs.
The young Beurs who had been marginalized without any future prospects were willing candidates joining their brothers in their armed resistance against their oppressors, the state the police, the law and the establishment in general.
During the history of the French colonisation of Africa and ttheir ‘mission civilatrice’, the missionaries and the administrators had never imagined that their little brown brothers would colonise the towns and cities of France, bringing with them their religion.
The French army had never imagined it would fight against the Arabs in the towns of France. The French schoolteachers at the time of the Colonial Exposition in Paris in 1925 could never have imagined Arabic would be taught to a large settler population in the schools of France.
When did the reversal take place, maybe in 1940, perhaps in 1958 or 62, or was it when the Settlers arrived in numbers in the early seventies, on the other hand it could have been in the eighties or nineties as the Neos were extended rights and became permanent Settlers. Some said it was when the flow of infiltrators could not be held back in the early part of the century. In any case it was too late when the troubles broke out in North Africa that led to the establishment of the Caliphate with another outpouring of refugees towards France.
The refusal to face up to the problem and take painful decisions simple transferred the problem towards the future. A powerful undercurrent of discontent built-up flowing across the country as a large part of its citizens was excluded from all possibility in the choice of their future. There were the Gallos who felt ignored by the politicians, there were the non-Gallos who were excluded from the system they included a huge Muslim minority that had no effective political role that corresponded with their beliefs and aspirations.
The political parties had chosen to close their eyes to the subject that most effected the lives of many of the fellow citizens concerning themselves with ideas which no longer corresponded with the changes that had been brought by the demographic changes that had been brought about by massive population transfers from Muslim Africa.
The Gallos whose ideas and protestations went against the intellectual and political elites' vision of what was politically correct were ostracised as racists, when their only real sentiment was their attachment to their country and its institutions and traditions that had been built over more than one thousand years, that were being brushed aside for what were undeniably alien concepts to Christian France.
The opinion leaders were composed of an intellectual elite led by the crusading media and leftist show business and political personalities, the gauche cavier and Parisian bobos, that preached multi-culturism and where all that was French, except their particular vision of 'culture', was execrated. They persistently sought to accuse their country of crime of all kinds both present and past against the third world and the settler populations.
The same clique even encouraged the flow of infiltrators by defending their demands for rights in spite of their illegal entry into the country.
The intellectual elite asked that the Gallo French accept the fait accompli and even embrace the values of the Settler population, which represented the majority of Settlers from the African continent and Muslims. Islam they explained was a great religion and deserved
respect as such, however, in the context of the confrontation between the third and first worlds, Islam had become a political vehicle, employed by radical movements from Arabia to Egypt to Algeria and to Europe.
The Muslims could not help supporting their brothers and co-religionists wherever they were in danger and conflict. Palestine was a symbol of their struggle against the state of Israel. The conflict against the Zionist state was a rallying point for all Muslims with the consequence that the Muslim community in Europe opposed the Jews giving rise to a fragmentation of society into distinct ethnic groups each claiming their rights and traditions thus promoting their ancestral animosities. The French, as most Europeans harboured an ancient tradition of anti-Semitism in their collective memory, they even condoned the rise anti-Semitism in the Arabo-Muslim population and the acts of desecration and vandalism, even procuring a certain sense of satisfaction from the acts that they themselves would not dare perpetrate.
The Europe Federation inspired no idea of patriotism; the kaleidoscope of nations that the thirty states formed was a political concept and not something that the average European could identify himself as being a part of.
The unemployed