Following the death of a fourth person from injuries sustained in last week's Paris bombings, political experts are hypothesizing about who the perpetrators of the bombings might be and whether such incidents will continue.
The media's immediate response to the bombings, which occurred Dec. 3 at 6 p.m. in Paris' Port-Royal station, was to blame the Islamic fundamentalists who claimed responsibility for last fall's rash of bombings-attacks which killed eight people and wounded 180.
"Who else would have the motive?" asked Warren Lerner, professor of history, adding that French support of Algeria-a policy that angers Islamic fundamentalists because the Algerian government does not tolerate their religion-is a critical issue in the nation.
Peter Feaver, assistant professor of political science, said he also finds the prevailing theory that points the finger at the fundamentalists to be "plausible." Because of Algeria's tight control, he said, the fundamentalists cannot protest in their own country and, as a result, they resort to threatening other countries to attract attention to their cause.
"They worked," Feaver said of the political impact of last year's bombings. "They generate a lot of news for you, and they generate a lot of fear." The positive reinforcement, he implied, may have given the activists incentive to kill again.
But blaming the fundamentalists for the recent crime, which occurred more than a year after the previous bombings, may be too abrupt, said Peter Lange, chair of the political science department. Another political group, he said, could have intentionally conducted the crime in a manner similar to last year's bombings so that it could more easily escape identification.
Lange pointed to the long time span between the bombings last year and this year's incident-as well as the fact that no one has yet accepted responsibility for it-as hints that the crime could have been committed by someone else.
The bombings have also frightened the residents of Paris. Police have already increased patrols and spot checks at train and airport stations across the country in an effort to placate fears. "That's the whole point of terrorism-kill a few to scare a lot," Feaver said. "And that's what they're doing."
Nevertheless, despite the gravity of these crimes and most experts' opinions that more bombings will probably occur, most professors said they did not feel that students should be deterred from studying abroad in Paris next semester.
"The probability of a student being hurt is [only] infinitesimally greater" in the wake of the bombings, Feaver said, adding that students face countless other dangers in Durham, including instances of the United States itself being bombed.
Nineteen students are currently slated to participate in study abroad programs in France, said Kurt Olausen, assistant director of foreign academic programs. Although none of the students have dropped out of the program thus far, Olausen said that another bombing could cause some students to decide that the risk is too great.
"You're always going to have some fallout from a small number of people who are scared or whose parents are scared," he said. But he added that such attacks are so random that there is no more risk in going to Paris than, for instance, visiting any major American city.
The U.S. State Department releases information on unsafe travel destinations that students can use to investigate any country, including France, to which they are planning to travel. Some of this information is listed at http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html.
Most of those concerned with the situation, however, agree that the threat will not disappear. "Terrorist actions have always been the weapon of the weak," Feaver said. "You choose them when you don't have the upper hand."
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