“FRANCE is at war,” said the country’s president, François Hollande, speaking to an extraordinary joint session of parliament in the gilded halls of Versailles on November 16th. But just what sort of war does he mean? On this Mr Hollande was eloquent but vague. He repeatedly affirmed that France must respond to the “ignoble” attack three days earlier, when terrorists killed at least 129 people of 19 different nationalities in Paris. But he also hinted at how difficult it is proving to react to attacks that were apparently planned in Syria, organised in Belgium and conducted on French soil—in part by French citizens.
The simplest bit is to carry on with existing plans. French jets carried out intense bombing raids against territory controlled by the Islamic State (IS) late on November 15th. Mr Hollande claimed they had destroyed a training camp and a command centre there. But the effectiveness of those strikes, and others by American forces, is proving hard to gauge. IS released a predictably jeering statement saying that the French bombs had inflicted no serious damage. Air strikes may contain or restrict the movement of IS leaders but, on the evidence to date at least, they do not appear to be weakening IS decisively. Mr Hollande made no mention of using ground troops against IS in his comments, even if only to rule them out.
Mr Hollande said he would meet the presidents of America and Russia in the coming days to build a more concerted international campaign against IS. (The agreement to meet with Mr Putin implied a shift from France’s earlier position that any talks on Syria be premised on the departure of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president and Russia’s client.) He also called for other European countries to do more, though he did not specifically mention NATO. On November 16th Britain’s defence secretary, Michael Fallon, said his country’s parliament should at last give permission for British planes to join French and American ones in bombing IS targets in Syria. Doing less, he implied, is to fail to take the fight to IS.
As for domestic measures, Mr Hollande said he wants to extend an existing state of emergency by three months, so that security services can continue to use special powers (including house arrest) to disrupt further plots or keep an eye on suspects. On November 15th police conducted 168 raids across the country, bringing 23 people in for questioning and placing 104 people under house arrest; they unearthed piles of weaponry, including rifles and even a rocket launcher. Parliament will almost certainly give Mr Hollande his extended state of emergency when they vote on November 18th.
More details are emerging about the identities of the men who carried out the attacks, including the 26-year-old Abdeslam Salah, who escaped Paris following the bloodshed on November 13th. He fled to Belgium the next day, even though Mr Hollande had declared the borders closed. Police stopped Mr Abdeslam in his car briefly, only to check his papers and let him proceed. Mr Abdeslam’s brother Brahim Abdeslam was killed in the attack; he had opened fire on diners in restaurants. Both Frenchmen had lived for some years in Molenbeek, an immigrant-heavy district of Brussels that is notorious as an IS recruitment ground. Belgian police raided addresses linked to the brothers on November 16th, but came away empty-handed. A third brother was arrested, then released, and told a press conference of his family’s shock at the attacks in Paris, saying he had no reason to suspect his siblings of planning anything.
The information uncovered so far about the other attackers hints at how hard it is for intelligence services to decide which of the many malcontents they are watching will really go on to carry out terrorist attacks. Samy Amimour, another Frenchman, was 28 and had reportedly travelled to Syria two years ago. He was involved in the bloodiest carnage on November 13th, at the Bataclan concert hall, and also died there. He had reportedly been on the run from police for the past two years, following earlier charges related to terrorism. Three of his relatives were arrested on November 16th. Another figure who killed and died at the concert hall, Omar Ismail Mostefai, was a 29-year-old Frenchman, a petty criminal judged by intelligence services only to have been at risk of radicalisation. But on November 16th authorities in Turkey said they had earlier given two warnings that Mostefai had arrived in Turkish territory, probably en route to Syria. The French authorities responded to the Turkish warnings only after the attacks in Paris.
Populist politicians in several countries have tried to linked the attacks to Europe’s influx of refugees, despite the fact that several of the terrorists were French. One of the suicide bombers who blew themselves up outside a football stadium in Paris was carrying a Syrian passport (probably fake). On Monday authorities confirmed that he had used that passport in October while posing as a refugee (first in Greece, then in Serbia). Other attackers clearly found different means to get to France, but the fact that one had claimed to be a refugee will mean some can claim generosity to refugees makes Europe vulnerable to terrorists.
Another suicide bomber at the stadium, 20-year-old Bilel Hadfi, had also lived in Belgium. His nationality is not yet known. One small consolation: it appears that the explosive vests worn by the attackers were rather ineffective at killing people other than the men who wore them.
A final figure of interest, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is said to be seen by French investigators as a possible organiser of the attacks. A Belgian member of IS, 27 years old and of Moroccan ethnicity, he is thought to be in Syria. Intelligence services believe he played a role in encouraging previous terrorist attacks that failed in France, including an attempted attack on a high-speed train from Brussels to Paris in August. (It failed after American passengers overpowered the attacker, whose weapons had jammed.) Mr Abaaoud, who has bragged of living under the nose of European intelligence even as they hunted him, may have trained some of the Paris attackers. France’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, said on November 16th that the Paris attacks were “conceived, organised and planned” in Syria. Mr Abaaoud could turn out to be the face of France’s enemy.