Any good French socialist/Marxist would know to ask Cui bono? Who benefits from the riots?

According to Amir Taheri, 'peaceful' Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood would benefit.

All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

The U.S. Army War College * has written a fairly prescient evaluation of this new tactic Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency (pdf)

The author identifies those issues that must be taken together and understood as a whole before any effective countermeasures can be taken to deal with the half-criminal and half-political nature of the gang phenomenon. This is a universal compound-complex problem that must be understood on three distinct levels of analysis: first, the gangs phenomena are generating serious domestic and regional instability and insecurity that ranges from personal violence to insurgent to state failure: second, because if their criminal activities and security challenges, the gangs phenomena are exacerbating civil-military and police-military relations problems and reducing effective and civil-military ability to control the national territory; and, third, gangs are helping transitional criminal organizations, insurgents, warlords, and drug barons erode the legitimacy and effective sovereignty of nation-states . The analytical commonality linking these three issues is the inevitable contribution to either

(a) failing and failed state status of targeted countries, or

(b) deposing or controlling the governments of targeted countries.

In these terms, we must remember that crime and instability are only symptoms of the threat. The ultimate threat is either state failure or the violent imposition of a radical socio-economicpolitical restructuring of the state and its governance.

In describing the gang phenomenon as a simple mutation of a violent act we label as insurgency, we mischaracterize the activities of nonstate organizations that are attempting to take control of the state. We traditionally think of insurgency as primarily a military activity, and we think of gangs as a simple law-enforcement problem. Yet, insurgents and third generation gangs are engaged in a highly complex political act—political war....

1. Concepts such as "enemy," "war," and "victory" should be reconsidered and redefined for intrastate conflicts. At the same time, leaders at all levels must understand how to apply all the instruments of national and international power―including the full integration of legitimate civil and military coalition partners―to achieve agreed political ends.

2. Civilian and military leaders at all levels must learn the fundamental nature of subversion and insurgency, with particular reference to the way in which force can be employed to achieve political ends and the way in which political considerations affect the use of force. Additionally, leaders need to understand the strategic and political-psychological implications of operational and tactical actions.

3. Civilian and military leaders at all levels must learn that power is not simply combat firepower directed at an enemy military formation or industrial capacity. Power is multilevel and combines "hard" and "soft" political, psychological, moral, informational, economic, societal, military, police, and civil bureaucratic activity that can be brought to bear directly and indirectly within a given security environment.

4. U.S. civilian and military personnel are expected to be able to operate effectively and collegially in coalitions or multinational contingents. They must also acquire the ability to deal collegially with civilian populations and local and global media. As a consequence, efforts that enhance interagency as well as international cultural awareness, such as civilian and military exchange programs, language training programs, and combined (multinational) exercises, should be revitalized and expanded.

5. In that connection, planners and negotiators who will operate at the strategic and high operational levels should be nurtured to function in coalitional decisionmaking and planning situations that can blend U.S. deliberate planning processes with concurrent multinational and multiorganizational practices.

6. Leaders must learn that an intelligence capability several steps beyond the usual is required for nonstate conflicts. This capability involves active utilization of intelligence operations as a dominant element of both strategy and tactics. Thus, commanders at all levels must be responsible for collecting and exploiting timely intelligence.

7. Civilian and military leaders must understand the totality of small, intrastate wars. Negotiations, agreements, and accords notwithstanding, complex emergency situations are zero-sum games in which there can be only one winner or no winners.

8. Finally, education and training for contemporary man-made or natural emergencies must prepare military "peacekeepers/enforcers" or "humanitarian relief providers" to be effective war fighters. The contemporary "savage wars of peace" will continue to put military forces into harm’s way.

* Link thanks to Robin Burk at Winds of Change