Fiddling after Paris Burned; A Month after Widespread Riots, France's Efforts to Address the 'Root Causes' of the Unrest Are Looking More and More like Purely Cosmetic Changes

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Byline: Eric Pape and Christopher Dickey

Kids in football uniforms run laps around a lit field in the early December twilight. They are specks in a vast cityscape of massive gray housing projects on the far fringe of the Paris sprawl. "Don't cut corners!" their coach calls out, breath steaming in the frost and his voice harsh amid the neighborhood's silence. Parents peek out from the high-rise windows as the kids start their game. The largely immigrant ghetto of Montfermeil is anything but heaven, but it doesn't feel like hell, either.

Hell was last month, when riots convulsed this and so many other outer-city ghettos across France. Beginning in nearby Clichy-sous-Bois, the violence raged for three full weeks: 10,000 cars and more than 200 buildings were burned, including schools, day-care centers, gymnasiums and small businesses. Thousands of people were detained, more than 400 were jailed, hundreds of others were injured--among them 234 cops and firefighters. The fate of some of France's leading politicians seemed to be at stake, perhaps the …