Swedes seek answers as riots leave suburbs alight Stockholm riots: A policewoman speaks to a resident of Husby. Mohammed Abbas sees himself as an ordinary Swede. And like millions of other ordinary Swedes, he fears that his dream society is under threat. When he first arrived in Stockholm as a refugee from Iran in 1994, the vast Husby council estate where he settled was a mixture of locals and foreigners, a melting pot for what was supposed to be a harmonious, multiracial paradise. Two decades on, though, "white flight" has left only one in five of Husby's flats occupied by ethnic Swedes, and many of the immigrants who took their place do not seem to share Mr Abbas' view that a new life in Sweden is a dream come true. Last week, the neighbourhood erupted into rioting - some of the fiercest urban unrest that Sweden has seen in decades - prompting a debate about the success of racial integration. "In the old days, the neighbourhood was more Swedish, and life felt like a dream, but now there are just too many foreigners, and a new generation that has grown up here with just their own culture," he said, gesturing towards the hooded youths milling around in Husby's pedestrian precinct. A buurning car in Kista. Also, in Sweden you cannot hit your children to discipline them, and this is a problem for foreign parents. The kids can feel they can cause whatever trouble they want, and the police don't even arrest any of them most of the time. After seven consecutive nights of rioting, Mr Mohammed was not the only one questioning the Swedish social model. Many were left asking why a country that prides itself on a generous welfare state, liberal social attitudes and a welcoming attitude to immigrants should have race riots at all. The disturbances erupted in Husby on May 19, after police shot dead an elderly Iraqi man brandishing a machete in his house. Angered at what they saw as police heavy-handedness, youths torched cars and buildings, and stoned police and firefighters. Residents watch as firemen extinguish a fire at a nursery school in Kista. Police were forced to draft in extra manpower from outside Stockholm as the trouble spread to other immigrant-dominated suburbs of the capital and towns such as Orebro, where 25 masked youths set fire to a school on Friday night. Also up in flames has gone the notion that egalitarian Sweden, which has largely avoided the global recession, might be immune from the social problems blighting less affluent parts of Europe. Fredrik Reinfeldt, Sweden's centre-right prime minister, blamed "hooligans" but also talked sympathetically of the difficult "transition period between different cultures." Politicians from the left, which ruled the country for most of the postwar period, blamed the trouble on social spending cuts introduced by Mr Reinfeldt, whose Moderate Party vowed to trim - but not slash - the welfare budget when he took office in 2006. Perhaps the most telling comment was the one from Kjell Lindgren, the spokesman for Stockholm Police. "We don't know why they are doing this," he said, when asked for a cause for the riots. There is no answer to it. Certainly, wandering around Husby last week, it was hard at first glance to see quite what the problem was. Built in the 1970s, the estate is one of dozens on Stockholm's outskirts that now house mainly immigrant populations, including large numbers of people from Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iraq. Between rows of clean-looking housing blocks are well-tended flower beds and neatly kept public gardens. And in the shopping precinct, where an ornamental fountain bubbles away, there are Ikea-style bars, shops and a cafe-bakery. At 8 per cent, Husby's jobless rate is three times the Swedish average, but only slightly higher than that of Britain. Mohammed Abdu, 27, whose family came to Sweden from Eritrea when he was three, works as a security guard. While he condemned the violence as "hooliganism," he claimed that many Husby residents suffered from discrimination from the police and employers. Besides, he added, living in such a prosperous, advanced country offered no real satisfaction for those at the bottom of the heap. Yusuf Carlos, 32, a Palestinian construction worker said: "Sweden is fair towards immigrants and it isn't hard to find work, or not before these riots anyway." Certainly, claims of racism upset many Swedes, who have no colonial history, and whose decision to admit large numbers of developing-world migrants from the 1980s onwards was more a very Swedish sense of humanitarian duty than political obligation. In recent years, far-right parties challenging the political class's long-standing pro-immigration consensus have flourished and now command up to 10 per cent of the vote. Aje Carlbom, a Swedish academic and the author of a critical study of Swedish immigration policy, said: "Anyone who wants to regulate immigration is immediately classified as a nationalist, which also implies a racist as well. It is still almost impossible to debate this question.