ABSTRACT
For a decade and a half between 1997 and 2012, as America was hit by 9/11 and Britain and Spain suffered major bombings, France avoided any jihadist attacks on its soil and developed a reputation as Europe’s ‘counterterrorist powerhouse’ (Gerecht and Schmitt 2007). British, U.S. and other government delegations visited Paris in the years after 2001 to learn from how the French were combating jihadist networks. They found that France’s intelligence capability and knowledge of terrorist networks were extensive and its police forces were robust in their counterterrorist operations, while hundreds of suspects were being imprisoned under the country’s anti-terrorism legislation. Scholars such as Robert Leiken (2012, 111–13, 266, 294) also claimed that the French state’s strict approach to integrating minorities had reduced its radicalisation problem to a minimum. All in all, France’s uncompromising response seemed to offer a model of successful counterterrorism.
