The terrorist attack on Saturday against French shoppers in Romans-sur-Isère, a town south of Lyon, reminds us of Europe’s continuing vulnerability to terrorism. And of immigration’s continuing sensitivity in European politics.
Two people were killed and five others wounded in the attack, which involved a knifeman’s stabbing spree at two shops. The suspect, a Sudanese refugee who has resided in France since 2017, surrendered peacefully to responding police officers. As authorities confronted him, the suspect was apparently kneeling in Islamic prayer. Various jihadist writings were found at the suspect’s residence, where two other Sudanese men were also detained.
Clearly, terrorists do not have much interest in coronavirus ceasefires. That’s relevant in light of the U.N. secretary-general’s recent call for a global cessation of conflict as the world confronts the pandemic. Unfortunately, while we might see obvious mutual interest in stopping conflict to address a shared concern, terrorists see an opportunity to maximize the damage they can cause amid this condition of serious societal doubt and government challenge.
This is particularly true of Salafi jihadist groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which pose the greatest terrorist threats globally. These groups and their inspired supporters (which almost certainly include this Sudanese suspect) care only about their end-state objective: a global caliphate. If many millions of innocents must perish to build that caliphate, well, they don’t care.
There’s also the particular political challenge that this attack represents to the European Union.
After all, alongside this attack, last week also saw a European Court of Justice ruling against three EU nations that refused to accept refugees as part of an EU agreement. The court said those nations — the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland — had acted unlawfully by putting their national borders before the EU’s common interests in dividing out refugees.
The EU’s problem is that, as much as the overwhelming majority of refugees in Europe are simply seeking to build new lives in safety, this latest attack in France will empower more nationalist-minded EU states in their insistence on stricter border polices. This is particularly true of Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who has staked his increasingly authoritarian premiership on strict borders and his gleeful rejection of EU directives.
Ultimately, then, terrorist attacks like this Saturday’s cut at two linked targets: civil society and the intractable political divisions between European nationalists and supporters of the European project.
