Just as France marks the 10th anniversary of the Bataclan massacres, another reminder has come of the permanence of the jihadist threat.
A former girlfriend of the only jihadist to survive the November 2015 attacks has been arrested on suspicion of plotting her own violent act.
The woman, a 27-year-old French convert to Islam named Maëva B, began a letter-writing relationship with Salah Abdeslam, 36, who is serving a life sentence in jail near the Belgian border following his conviction in 2022.
When prison guards discovered that Abdeslam had been using a USB key containing jihadist propaganda, they traced its origin to face-to-face meetings that the prisoner had with Maëva B.
Detectives then looked into Maëva B’s own computer and telephone, where they found evidence that she may have been planning a jihadist attack. On Monday, she was placed under judicial investigation along with two alleged associates.
With France commemorating 10 years since the worst attack in its modern history, the arrest has focused minds on the enemy that never went away.
The word Bataclan has become a byword in France for extreme Islamist violence since the Paris attacks in 2015
On the evening of 13 November 2015, jihadist gunmen and suicide bombers conducted a sequence of coordinated attacks that culminated in a bloody raid on the Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris.
Before that, three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Stade de France, where a football international was underway. Then others in the gang opened fire with Kalashnikovs on people drinking in bars and cafés not far from the Bataclan.
There, a performance by American group The Eagles of Death Metal had just started, when three jihadists burst in and fired indiscriminately into the auditorium. They took hostages and then blew themselves up as police moved in.
Overall, 130 people were killed, 90 in the Bataclan, and more than 400 were treated in hospital. Countless others suffered psychological trauma.
The word Bataclan has since become a byword in France for extreme Islamist attacks, in much the same way that 9/11 did in the US.
Though there have been other attacks since, like the Nice lorry massacre of July 2016 and the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in October 2020, the scale and organisation of 13 November 2015 set it apart.
Ten years on, much has changed. The disappearance of the Islamic State (IS) group as a major force in Syria and Iraq means that the wherewithal to conceive, plan, and carry out complex terrorist projects is greatly diminished.
At the end of a day of events on Thursday, the Eiffel Tower will be lit up in the colours of the French flag.
The Bataclan attackers were young men of mainly North African origin, recruited in Belgium and France, trained in IS territory in the Middle East, who then returned to Europe hidden among a vast flow of migrants.
Everywhere, they could draw on a network of supporters offering shelter, transportation, and financial assistance.
According to leading Middle East expert Gilles Kepel, intelligence services have also become highly effective in controlling online radicalisation.
“They now have access to IT resources… which allow them to detect a lot of individual initiatives, often not very sophisticated ones… and stop them before they hatch,” he said in an interview with Le Figaro.
But according to Mr Kepel, the danger now comes from what he calls “ambient jihadism”.
“The threat is now home-grown and a lot younger. It feeds on friendships and social networks of the like-minded, without there ever necessarily being people having to give and obey orders,” he said.
The threat is all the more concerning, he believes, because it is so porous – with events in Gaza and Israel having a “traumatic effect” on the minds of many citizens and being “exploited by the entrepreneurs of anger”.
France’s current political crisis is also stoking the danger, he argues, with an impotent presidency giving way to a partisan parliament where extremists of left and right hold increasing sway.
“If what separates us becomes more important than what unites us as French people and fractures the national consensus, then a chasm will open beneath our feet and violence will have fewer and fewer restraints,” he said.
In recent days, survivors have shared accounts of how their lives have changed over the past decade.
Thursday’s commemorations will be held throughout the day at the various attack sites, culminating with the opening of a 13 November garden near Paris City Hall.
