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‘A training in violence’: the connecting line between France’s ‘war on drugs’ and jihadism

In France, there are many ways in which the pool of violence caused by drug prohibition bleeds into home-grown jihadism. But there is an alternative. Listen to a recorded audio version of this article.

By Johann Hari
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Soldiers on the streets of Paris. Thibault Camus/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.
Soldiers on the streets of Paris. Thibault Camus/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.

Soldiers on the streets of Paris, November 2015. Thibault Camus/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.

For two years now, the world has been watching as France is subjected to the most vicious jihadi attacks of any European country. From the murder of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, to the massacre of partying twenty-somethings at the Bataclan, to the driving of a truck into the crowds celebrating Bastille Day, the most obvious question is – why France? Why are such a disproportionate number of their own citizens behaving this way?

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0