Prison in France: Terrorism and Islamism

by Yves Mamou • January 23, 2018 at 7:00 am

Like its police and the firefighters, France's prison guards say they live in a permanent climate of violence and fear. And their exasperation is growing.
"Before, every morning, I was afraid to discover a guy hanging in his cell. You know what I'm dreading today? To be slaughtered, stripped, stabbed in the back. In the name of Islam and ISIS. Every day, on my way to work, this fear gnaws at my belly." — 'Bernard,' a French prison guard.
"In the old days, aggressive behavior was linked to the difficulties of everyday life. Now hatred and violence are unleashed [by Islamists] against [our] authority, our society and its values." — Joaquim Pueyo, MP, former director of Fleury-Mérogis prison.
Instead of understanding that the famous deradicalization centers have not been useful because deradicalization did not take place, France's policymakers persist in thinking that the solution to the Islamist war is appeasement. Their new experiments all go in the same direction: pursuing the fantasy that "if we are nice with jihadists, they will be nice to us."

France's Mont-de-Marsan prison. (Image source: Jibi44/Wikimedia Commons)

French prison guards are on strike. In a period of less than 10 days, a number of guards in various prisons were attacked and wounded, mainly by Islamists incarcerated for terrorist offenses or petty criminals apparently on their way to becoming radical Islamists. In reaction, the guards have blocked the normal functioning of the majority of prisons.

The wave of attacks began on January 11, 2018. Three guards of Vendin-le-Vieil's prison, in the north of France, were lightly wounded in a knife attack committed by the Christian Gantzarski, a German convert to Islam who joined Al Qaeda and masterminded the bombing of a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, in 2002.

On January 15, 2018, seven guards were attacked and injured by a "radicalized" inmate at Mont-de-Marsan prison, in the south of France.

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The American Stake in the Czech Elections

by Jiri Valenta • January 23, 2018 at 4:30 am

Czech President Milos Zeman adamantly refuses to obey the European Union immigration quotas, even in the face of EU lawsuits.
As for the widely bruited charge that he is pro-Russian: In 1968, this writer, a former classmate of Zeman's in the Prague School of Economics, together defended the Prague reforms before hostile academic audiences in Leningrad and Moscow just weeks before the Soviet invasion. Expelled from the Communist Party, for his opposition to the Soviets, Zeman was also thrice in two decades fired from his job. In contrast, his opponent in the run-off, Jiri Drahos, repeatedly traveled to West under the watchful supervision of the Czech secret police.
Zeman's defeat would deprive Europe of a powerful voice against anti-Semitism and Islamo-fascism. Drahos, an inexperienced leader, is more likely to be malleable to Brussels's demands on accepting quotas on Muslim immigration. The result of the Czech vote will reverberate through Europe. Consequently, Zeman's reelection is in America's national interest.

Pictured: Czech President Milos Zeman (left) and Jiri Drahos (right), the two contenders in the January 26-27 run-off vote for the Czech Republic presidency. (Image source: Zeman, OISV/Wikimedia Commons; Drahos, Jindřich Nosek/Wikimedia Commons)

The significance of the upcoming run-off of the presidential election in Czech Republic is largely underestimated in Washington. But its prevalent view of it as a not too significant event in a small European country is dead wrong.

Contenders include the sitting President, outspoken and politically incorrect Milos Zeman, who garnered 39% of the vote in the first of a two-phase election. His rival is chemist Jiri Drahos, the correct, low key, former president of the Czech Academy of Sciences, who won 27%. A tight race is expected in the January 26-27 vote.

In America, Zeman's foes are led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, together with President Barack Obama's State Department holdovers. They yearn for Zeman's defeat at they do for the downfall of President Donald Trump, whom Zeman in some ways resembles.

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The U.S. and Pakistan: Time for a Divorce?

by Lawrence A. Franklin • January 23, 2018 at 4:00 am

"The amount of pain that Pakistan has inflicted upon the United States in the last 12 years is unprecedented." — Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan's former spy chief.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency continues to sponsor, equip, and train several terrorist organizations that directly target American troops in Afghanistan, as well as regional allies of the United States, such as India. The U.S. could direct the Department of State to place Pakistan on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
It is long past time for the U.S. to choose what type of relationship it wants.

U.S. policymakers should not have been surprised -- if they were -- at Pakistan's decision to give refuge to Osama bin Laden, whose hideaway (pictured) was in Abbottabad, less than a 30-minute drive from the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul. (Photo by Getty Images)

U.S. President Donald Trump's recent denunciation of Pakistan's "lies and deceit" is long overdue. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawajah Asif's retort -- "We do not have any alliance" with the U.S. -- appears to administer the last rites to a relationship long battered by mistrust. Are there, however, sufficient U.S. interests served by maintaining military cooperation with Pakistan, despite the contentious relationship?

Pakistan's two-faced role in joining the U.S.-led war on terror, while at the same time giving sanctuary and assistance to terrorist groups, was apparent even before the 9/11 attack on America and continues to this day. President Trump's decision to withhold military aid may cause Pakistani intelligence agencies to be even less cooperative than they were in the past in assisting U.S. forces deployed to Afghanistan. Moreover, Pakistan's commercial, economic, and investment interests appear now more closely aligned with China.

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