Raul Magni-Berton, Professor of Political Science, Sciences Po Grenoble, UMR Pacte, Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)Clara Egger, Assistant professor in Globalisation Studies and Humanitarian Action, University of Groningen and Simon Varaine, Doctor of Political Science, Sciences Po Grenoble

Since 2015, France has been regularly targeted by Islamist terrorism. More victims have been counted in the last five years than in the previous 30. If we exclude the countries of origin of Islamist organizations where they are engaged in a war often against the governments in place (as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria or Burkina Faso), France acts as the most targeted country in the world.

To define the most appropriate strategy to respond to this situation, the government, through its Secretary of State for Higher Education and Research, has mobilized the academic community. The latter responded in kind, as evidenced by the commitment of the President of the CNRS in a 2016 report on the issue, affirming the vocation of research to "set in motion concrete actions and have an effect on society, serving the entire national community: simply accept to be useful".

But what does "useful" research mean in the context of preventing attacks?

The government agenda and the concept of radicalization

Following the example of the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the French government has identified the process of ideological radicalization as the main factor in explaining Islamist terrorism.

According to this approach, terrorism is essentially understood as a "societal" problem, fuelled by social tensions, group phenomena, religious indoctrination and a lack of critical thinking.

Our community has largely followed this agenda, as evidenced by the CNRS President's report summarizing the state of knowledge on "radicalization", the creation of a "Law and Justice" research mission and the multiplication of doctorates, workshops, schools and colloquia on this theme.

It has therefore chosen to be useful by providing our government with the tools to pursue its policy in a better-informed way.

In so doing, it failed to mobilize a wide range of knowledge that could have informed citizens and politicians about the political determinants of the wave of attacks that marked our country.

The political determinants of the attacks were known before 2015

Before 2015, the social sciences had already produced solid knowledge on the effects of government policies on terrorist attacks.

At the time, a great deal of research had clearly demonstrated the influence of two factors: foreign military intervention and policies that discriminated against minority populations.

The first factor, military interventionism, was highlighted in the early 2000s by the first statistical studies comparing the occurrence of terrorist attacks around the world.

One of the most widely cited scientific articles on terrorism, "The strategic logic of suicide terrorism", published in 2003, shows that suicide attacks committed to date are almost always linked to a context of foreign military occupation.

This result was subsequently replicated by numerous research studies. In 2009, two articles based on the first systematic data collection covering tens of thousands of attacks worldwide, compared the influence of numerous factors on terrorist attacks. The statistical results are unambiguous.

Democracies are not particularly targeted by terrorism, and international attacks are no more numerous between countries representing different "civilizations".

On the other hand, this research reveals that it is the countries' military interventionism that explains their targeting by terrorist groups.

A few years later, other articles confirmed this thesis, showing thatU.S. military occupation predicts terrorist attacks, that military intervention is associated with suicidal terrorist attacks or, with expanded data, that it is indeed external intervention that produces terrorist attacks, with a very slightly increased probability in democracies. It should also be pointed out that military intervention precedes attacks, not follows them, as shown in the figure below.

These studies merely validate the general idea that terrorism is a retaliatory activity in asymmetrical warfare.

This theory led Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq after the 2004 attack.

With regard to discrimination against minority populations, the studies published before 2015 were equally solid. Based on the "Minorities at Risk" project - developed by a group of researchers at the University of Maryland - which tracks changes in the degree of discrimination against minorities in different countries around the world over time, several publications had shown that discrimination against minorities leads to an increase in terrorist attacks.

Attacks are more frequent in countries with specific linguistic or religious minorities, unfavorable economic conditions and under-representation in the political sphere.

It should be noted that some countries, notably the Netherlands, have taken this research seriously by developing an anti-discrimination program explicitly designed to combat terrorism. This program has initiated a public debate on the place of religion in secular Dutch society, trained a network of local actors on these issues, and strengthened trust between Dutch institutions and Muslim citizens.

As early as 2014, the risk of a terrorist response in France was foreseeable.

In September 2014, when France was deploying the largest European contingent to intervene in the conflict in Iraq, these scientific studies had already been published and replicated. So we knew that this operation was highly likely to produce attacks.

First of all, France was at risk due to the size of its Muslim minority - the largest in Western Europe - and the well-documented discrimination to which it is subjected.

Compared to other citizens, Muslims in France are largely disadvantaged economically. Discrimination in hiring is massive: for example, in 2010, a large-scale study showed that, on an equal CV basis, people with a Muslim-sounding name were between 2 and 3 times less likely to be accepted for a job interview.

Politically, Muslims are severely under-represented in political bodies, and their level of trust in law enforcement agencies is much lower than that of other citizens.

Furthermore, compared to other Western European countries, France is characterized by restrictive policies in terms of freedom of worship, such as laws banning conspicuous religious symbols in schools or concealment of the face in public spaces, which have a particular impact on this minority.

When the war broke out, France was the Western European country most at risk of terrorist attack. This risk increased considerably when France decided to deploy far more troops and weapons than any other European country. France was now the leading interventionist country, behind the United States, and home to a large, discriminated-against Sunni community.

The policies undertaken to respond, on French soil, to these attacks - targeting individuals and groups suspected of radicalization - have increased this risk, producing renewed discrimination against Muslims, likely to generate, in turn, a surge in terrorist vocations. In a 2018 study, a team of researchers from the École Normale Supérieure, the University of Geneva (Switzerland) and Leiden (Netherlands), demonstrate that the anti-terrorism policies pursued in France since 2015 have had the effect of reinforcing Muslim populations' sense of stigmatization and insecurity, reducing their trust in French institutions and fuelling their opposition to the government's agenda in the fight against radicalization.

Informing today about the effects of government policies

Our community's desire to be useful to the government led to an unfortunate perverse effect. By focusing on the process of religious radicalization as a societal phenomenon, it failed to draw attention to the way in which the government's political choices were potentially exposing France to a high risk of attack.

Such an alert could have been issued in 2014, when France was deploying its army in Iraq and Syria, in a tense national context vis-à-vis Muslim minorities.

Over and above the reasons for our community's attitude, we are now aware of the need to correct our course by informing citizens and politicians about the likely effects of current policies on the risk of terrorist attacks. For these risks are not behind us.

Indeed, France's military interventions are continuing.

The French government recently decided to step up its Barkhane operation targeting jihadist groups in the Sahel by sending in new troops.

In addition, discrimination against French Muslims is worsening as a result of counter-terrorism policies.

The bill to "consolidate republican principles" (e.g. the law against "separatism") introduces measures which, while not exclusively targeting radical Islam, once again have the effect of particularly stigmatizing these populations, notably by restricting freedom of worship and tightening control over religious associations.

This worrying situation is exacerbated by the pressure the government is exerting on the academic community, notably through Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, who recently denounced "Islamo-leftism" that is "wreaking havoc at universities". Echoing the words of former minister Manuel Valls in 2016 - according to whom "to explain is already to want to excuse a little", this intervention suggests that the academic community expresses above all mere opinions, which are moreover rather favorable to Islamism.

Our aim is not to criticize the merits of these policies, which are worthy of democratic debate, but to inform citizens and politicians of the scientific fact that they risk increasing the number of Islamist terrorist attacks in our country.

Not to fulfill this role would be to accept that public research becomes, unbeknownst to it, a mere intelligence agency at the service of the government.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.