Background
The car torchings we saw last night in Sweden are actually not a new phenomenon. It all started in public housing areas in Malmö in the early 2000's and have gradually escalated ever since. Especially the 2005 riots in France inspired young immigrants in notorious Rosengård in Malmö to torch cars and seek confrontation with first responders. A group of youngsters in Rosengård with Middle Eastern background said in an interview with Dagens Nyheter 2005 that they felt "inspired by their French brothers".
Since then the violence has spread to other places. First to other public housing areas, with a large percentage of immigrants with non-European background, in larger cities like Stockholm, Gothenburg and Uppsala. But in recent years it has also spread to smaller cities, in great part due to an increased ethnic diversity in smaller cities and more rural towns.
The difference this time is the scale and, possibly, that the attack on Frölunda square in Gothenburg yesterday was pretty well documented. Usually we only see the results after the effect: Burning cars, or burnt car wrecks. We rarely see the perpetrators in action torching car after car. The attacks were also carried out rather early in the evening, not at night, and cellphone technology has improved in the last years which result in better pictures.
This morning the Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven likened the car torchings to a "military operation“. He seemed shocked. It's almost as if it was the first time Löfven actually saw anything like this for himself, even though he has probably just watched the same video clips as everybody else. But for those of us who have witnessed dozens of car torchings, on site, live, felt the heat, the smell and coughed from the smoke, it's nothing new.
Unknown perpetrators
The police say they have identified several suspects, but initially chose not to make any arrests. Possibly a result of an extremely overburdened police force. Young perpetrators rarely get any harder punishments and the police choose to prioritize more serious crime like gang shootings and murders, which they have a hard time battling anyway. The decision not to arrest anyone caused some controversy and an outcry from right-leaning lawmakers.
After lunch, Tuesday, the police said however in a press release that two persons between 16 and 21 had been arrested suspected of rioting and aggravated arson. If that holds up in court, which is unlikely, it could result in serious punishments for the perpetrators (6-18 years or life). The police also said that they are expecting more arrests during the day. It's still not publicly known who the arrested perpetrators are. If a court decides they should remain detained, their identities will become public. Then we will hopefully better know what happened last night and why.
There are numerous hypothesis about who are behind the attacks. Some blame left wing extremists like Antifa, but there are no indication of political motives. The police suspect that the attacks in Västra Frölunda and Hjällbo in Gothenburg, and Kronogarden in the small town Trollhättan around 50 miles north of Gothenburg, may have been coordinated. They all happened within a timespan of fifteen minutes.
Attacks in other towns might in turn have been copy cats; criminals inspired by the early reports about car torchings in Gothenburg and Trollhättan. Or simply car torchings that would have occurred anyway. Cars set ablaze in Swedish immigrant-dominated neighbourhoods is a pretty common sight.
"A war zone"
One way of looking at the violence is as a part of a war, waged between different criminal gangs as well as the local population. The burning cars strikes fear in people, make them less likely to call the police if they see something suspicious or testify in court if they witness a violent crime. And according to several reports, it works. People become less and less inclined to cooperate with the police during investigations. A police force overloaded with investigations tend to drop the ones where they can't make any progress, even when it's serious crimes like attempted murder.
But sometimes the cause of the violence is not as sinister. Or at least can be perceived as far more trivial.
Last summer there were similar riots in Kronogarden in Trollhättan, a tiny suburb with a population of less than 6000. The spark that ignited the violence was a decision by the authorities to forcibly remove a Somali child from its famliy. That led to turbulent demonstrations and an attack by a group of Somalis on a security guard with unknown ethnic background, but who had close relations to the Arab community in Kronogarden. A night of clashes between Somali and Arab immigrants followed.
Similar riots also rocked the small suburb during the summer of 2016. The local female Liberal politician Rita Paulsson Svensson, originally a refugee from Lebanon and now married to a Swede, compared the situation with the Lebanese civil war:
"When I went there, it was like Marshall law was in effect. It was like those hours between the bombs in Beirut, when it was calm. It was completely desolate, you couldn't go out after seven a clock, that was the feeling", she commented when I interviewed her and continued:
"And the smell of burnt asphalt. As soon as you went into the area you felt you're in a war zone because of the smell. Those feelings came back to me. It was like being back in Beirut when you quickly had to get water before the next bomb fell."
That time the rioters complained to media about the policing in the area. They wanted the police to give up their policy of stopping suspected cars in their search for criminals. Many young immigrants felt "harassed" by the police, even though there were no known complaints about police brutality or foul play.
Jos jossakin kulttuurissa on jotakin vikaa, eikö syypää ole vähintäänkin osittain kulttuurin luomisesta vastuussa olevan ihmisryhmän geenistö? 
repesin
Vai oliko tuolla esim. kiinalaisiakin polttelemassa autoja jne.?
