A few hours later, many tourists were back strolling on the banks of the Seine with barely a second thought. But the French themselves were seized by what government officials described as a public “psychosis”-a return of the fear instilled by past waves of terror in 1982 and 1986. Crank calls emptied stores, Metro stations and museums: in a single incident, 8,000 people were evacuated from beneath the crystal pyramid of the Louvre. There were plenty of potential suspects in the latest bombing: Algerian fundamentalists, Serbian nationalists, Middle Eastern terrorists, deranged environmentalists and other fanatics. But no one made a public claim of responsibility for the massacre beneath Place St-Michel. And as police searched for clues, the French people were left baffled by the bombing. Why did the terrorists do it? And did covert actions by their own government somehow provoke the attack?
French governments play dangerous games with foreign policy. Like other Western powers, they meddle in Third World politics, as they have lately in Algeria. And in recent years they have been more than ready to put their troops on the line in places like the Persian Gulf or Rwanda. In Bosnia alone, 43 French soldiers have been killed. But the French play by rules that are not easily understood. Actions follow one logic, words another. In her recent book, “French or Foe?”, social observer Polly Platt writes: “Truth, or what Anglo-Americans mean by Truth, is relative in France.” Calling a Frenchman a liar doesn’t reflect on his honneur and “will not start a barroom brawl,” she says. French officials don’t seem to care if no one even pretends to believe their diplomatic lies.
A classic example surfaced in Bosnia early last week. After two more French peacekeepers were killed, an explosion rocked the Bosnian Serb capital of Pale. A leading Paris newspaper, Liberation, said that a French warplane had bombed the home of a close associate of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, to teach him a lesson. The French government formally denied that it did any such thing. Then The New York Times confirmed the Liberation report, drawing on U.S. sources. The formal denials continued. But with unabashed equivocation, French Defense Minister Charles Millon said that bombing Pale “would have been an appropriate response to the logic of war chosen by the Serbs.”
The French pride themselves on their gift for waging what they call “a war in the shadows.” Pierre Marion, a former head of the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE), talks frankly about the nature of the game. After attacks in Paris by Middle Eastern terrorists in 1982, “I proposed that we eliminate a certain number of people who were in support networks,” Marion told NEWSWEEK. That plan was turned down, but not on principle. It was understood that such killings would send “a very targeted message,” Marion said. But there’s always the risk that French citizens might become the victim of a reply.
French governments don’t make a fetish of consistency. In the 1980s some terrorists were punished, some were tolerated. Illegal aliens with no connection to violence were rounded up while deals were cut with real terrorists. The pattern was repeated with Iranian, Syrian and Palestinian groups. The purpose was not to eliminate the sources of terrorism, only to reach an understanding with its organizers. Such policies appeared to pay off when Jacques Chirac, now France’s president, served as prime minister. He ended the bombings that swept Paris in 1986. He freed French hostages in Lebanon. He was accused of making deals with Iran and its proxies-and also of reneging on them. But peace was restored. Until last week.
Now the French are left wondering whether something has come undone. Has a no-compromise stand supporting Algeria’s military regime brought the wrath of its terrorist opponents to Paris? That was the favored theory among some investigators and in the press. Or did the Serbs organize a retaliation for what happened in Pale? After so many wars in the shadows, the French game has become so layered with deception that nobody can be sure anymore who is winning– or who is at risk.
