The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs

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Detailed overview

Andrew Hussey frames contemporary French urban violence as the visible surface of a much longer colonial and postcolonial war between France and Arab or Muslim populations shaped by French power. The book begins not in a nineteenth-century archive but in the Gare du Nord riot of 27 March 2007, where Hussey hears "Na'al abouk la France!" and insists that the curse cannot be reduced to Parisian folklore about popular revolt. From the first pages, his method is to read street language, police violence, train stations, banlieue geography, and colonial memory together.

The book's first movement stays in metropolitan France, especially Paris, Saint-Denis, Villiers-le-Bel, Lyons, Fresnes, and the banlieues. Hussey treats the word banlieue as historically loaded, not a neutral translation of suburb, and he links police confrontations, housing estates, Muslim identities, and anti-French anger to the unprocessed afterlife of empire. The Gare du Nord is a frontier between central Paris and the poor northern suburbs, but it is also a colonial checkpoint in miniature: commuters, police, young Black and Arab banlieusards, soldiers at the Eurostar terminal, and ticket barriers all appear in one compressed scene.

Algeria occupies the book's largest historical section because Hussey treats it as the decisive wound in France's relationship with Arabs. He moves from Algiers and the Regency through the 1830 conquest, Abd el-Kader, settler fantasies of "Latin Africa," pied-noir culture, anti-Semitism, Algerian nationalism, the FLN, de Gaulle, torture, civil war, and the later Algerian "intifada." The point is not only that France colonized Algeria; it is that France imagined Algeria as an extension of itself, then found that this intimacy made separation especially violent and memory especially unstable.

Morocco and Tunisia give the book different colonial patterns. In Morocco, Hussey moves through Tangier, bars hidden behind drapes or blacked-out windows, queer expatriate mythology, protectorate-era "peaceful penetration," French friends, modern alienation, and routes between Neuilly and Marrakesh. In Tunisia, he begins with Zine Ben Ali's flight on 14 January 2011 and Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation in Sidi Bouzid, then reads the Tunisian revolution against the older French-made structures of Tunisian state, tourism, corruption, and migration.

The final prison section makes incarceration the domestic endpoint of the long war. Fresnes Prison, October 2011, Muslim prisoners, guards, weeping new arrivals, radicalization, humiliation, and the French carceral state bring the colonial story back inside France's institutions. Hussey's through-line is that the "French intifada" is not an imported Middle Eastern phenomenon simply arriving in Europe; it is generated by the routes, wars, insults, labor migrations, policing habits, and symbolic geographies France built across North Africa and then carried home.

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Section-by-section notes

Introduction: 'Fuck France!'

Summary: Hussey opens with the Gare du Nord riot of 27 March 2007, when the arrest of a young Congolese fare-dodger turns the station into a standoff between riot police in blue-black gear and young Black and Arab banlieusards. He describes smoke, dogs, batons on shields, a smashed photo booth, a burning ticket office, Eurostar passengers guarded by soldiers with machine guns, and slogans including "Nik les schmitts," "Fuck the police," and "Na'al abouk la France." He argues that the press domesticated the riot as Parisian rebellion, while the Arabic curse expressed colonial memory, banlieue exclusion, and a long war against France. Source anchors: Gare du Nord; 27 March 2007; Congolese man; banlieues; Na'al abouk la France; Barbès.

Analysis: Gare du Nord and Barbès let Hussey turn one transport hub into a map of colonial France inside Paris. The station works as a chokepoint and gateway because ticket barriers, police lines, Eurostar soldiers, and suburban commuters compress metropolitan movement and state scrutiny into one place. The Congolese man and banlieues make the riot about race, policing, and suburb-city access rather than generic youth disorder. "Na'al abouk la France" is the key evidence because Hussey treats the curse as a break from French revolutionary folklore and as an entry into Arab and Muslim anger shaped by France's imperial past.

Part One: State of Denial

Summary: Part One moves from Gare du Nord to Saint-Denis, Villiers-le-Bel, Lyons, and the contemporary French banlieue as a space of fear, contempt, policing, and denial. Hussey describes the November 2007 trip to Villiers-le-Bel, explains why banlieue is mistranslated as suburb, and follows murders, local secrets, radical religious figures, and the way French public language avoids naming colonial continuities. The part ties council estates, police encounters, Le Parisien, Le Figaro, Libération, Le Monde, Abd al Malik, Céline, Sartre, Michel Houellebecq, and Mustafa Dikeç's "badlands" into a diagnosis of metropolitan France at war with parts of itself. Source anchors: Villiers-le-Bel; Saint-Denis; banlieue; Abd al Malik; Lyons; Badlands of the Republic.

Analysis: Villiers-le-Bel and Saint-Denis move the book from spectacle to geography, showing where the Gare du Nord rioters come from. The banlieue definition matters because Hussey is arguing over legibility before policy: French public language turns suburbs, estates, youths, Muslims, and "badlands" into categories the state can police while denying their colonial genealogy. Abd al Malik, Lyons, and Badlands of the Republic supply cultural, religious, and urban evidence that the conflict is not only police-versus-youth but a national refusal to admit how colonial hierarchy has been reproduced around Paris and other cities.

Part Two: Algeria, Prisoners of Love

Summary: Part Two is the historical core, beginning with cultural images such as Délice Paloma and Biyouna's Madame Aldjéria before moving into the conquest and reinvention of Algeria by France. Hussey traces the Walls of Algiers, the 1830 expedition, Abd el-Kader, the "Algerines," settler fantasies of New America and Latin Africa, Ernest Renan, pied-noir memory, anti-Jewish politics, Algerian nationalism, Camus, the FLN, de Gaulle, torture, the war of independence, the 1990s civil war, and the ongoing Algerian relationship with France. The section's many chapters make Algeria a place France loved, possessed, mythologized, brutalized, and never fully left behind. Source anchors: Algeria; Délice Paloma; Abd el-Kader; Latin Africa; FLN; de Gaulle.

Analysis: Algeria and Abd el-Kader give the book its deepest colonial archive, because Algeria was not imagined as a distant colony only but as a French destiny. Délice Paloma and Latin Africa show empire and periphery operating through desire as well as rule: settlers, administrators, writers, and nationalists all fight over whether Algeria is France, outside France, or the proof that France cannot separate the two. The FLN and de Gaulle matter because the war of independence returns to France as memory, migration, policing, and resentment; Algeria becomes the template for why contemporary Arab-French conflict feels intimate and unresolved.

Part Three: In Morocco

Summary: Part Three begins in Dean's Bar in Tangier, where a Moroccan man tries to punch Hussey in the face, and uses that scene to enter Morocco's contradictions around alcohol, masculinity, Islam, colonial nightlife, and expatriate mythology. Hussey describes Tangier and Casablanca bars hidden by drapes or blacked-out windows, the French and Spanish protectorates, queer Tangier, peaceful penetration, French friends, modern blankness, European radicalization, and the Neuilly-Marrakesh route. The part links Moroccan urban drinking culture, protectorate memory, literary and sexual tourism, and the movement between elite France and North African desire. Source anchors: Dean's Bar; Tangier; Casablanca; protectorates; Queer Tangier; Neuilly-Marrakesh Express.

Analysis: Dean's Bar and Tangier make Morocco enter through bodily threat and nightlife rather than state chronology. Casablanca and the protectorates show that hidden bars are colonial leftovers as well as contemporary hypocrisies. Queer Tangier and the Neuilly-Marrakesh Express matter because Hussey tracks commercial society at the edge of empire: tourism, expatriate myth, alcohol, sex, elite travel, and protected urban space let French, European, and Moroccan identities use one another while pretending the exchange is only private pleasure.

Part Four: Tunisia, Made in France

Summary: Part Four opens with President Zine Ben Ali fleeing Tunis for Saudi Arabia on 14 January 2011 and with Parisian Tunisians celebrating as if the revolution belonged to both countries. Hussey returns to Mohammed Bouazizi, the twenty-six-year-old street vendor from Sidi Bouzid who set himself on fire on 17 December 2010, then reads the uprising through Tunis, French influence, corruption, tourism, holidays, miracles, and the structures of a state partly made through French models. The section connects Tunisian revolution, Paris, Sidi Bouzid, Ben Ali's palaces, Saudi exile, and the ambiguity of liberation in a country long shaped by French ties. Source anchors: Zine Ben Ali; 14 January 2011; Mohammed Bouazizi; Sidi Bouzid; Tunis; Saudi Arabia.

Analysis: Zine Ben Ali and Mohammed Bouazizi give Part Four its two poles: authoritarian flight and sacrificial protest. Sidi Bouzid matters because Hussey refuses to make revolution a Parisian abstraction; it begins with a vendor, a cart, police humiliation, and local despair. Bouazizi turns moral economy into political ignition because the state violates ordinary claims to work, dignity, and protection before the uprising becomes constitutional language. Tunis and Saudi Arabia show the wider system of elite escape, while Paris celebrations reveal how Tunisian politics and French postcolonial life remain joined.

Part Five: Prisoners of War

Summary: Part Five turns to Fresnes Prison south of Paris, where Hussey first visits in October 2011 and learns from guards that new prisoners often break down and weep on entry. He describes the shock of prison, the relief or collapse of men who resisted arrest, Muslim prisoners, captivity, French guards, radicalization, shame, and the prison as a concentrated site of the long war. The section connects incarceration to the banlieue, policing, colonial humiliation, Islamic identity, and the French state's attempt to contain the anger it helped create. Source anchors: Fresnes Prison; October 2011; guards; Muslim prisoners; captivity; radicalization.

Analysis: Fresnes Prison and guards bring the book's colonial argument into a locked French institution. Muslim prisoners and radicalization matter because Hussey is not treating prison as an afterthought; it is where policing, banlieue marginality, and religious identity are compressed. Captivity makes state capacity coercive and diagnostic at once: the republic can arrest, classify, isolate, and discipline men whose anger it cannot explain without revisiting Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and the banlieues. The prison becomes a domestic continuation of the conflicts the book has traced across North Africa and France.