French press review 27 September 2013

Africa, Syria and Roma are the big stories today..

Africa takes pride of place in this morning’s issue of the Communist party newspaper, L’Humanité which re-examines the terrorist attack in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and the changing geopolitical landscape of the horn of Africa.

Benoît Hazard, a leading anthropologist at France’s main scientific research Institute, CNRS, told the paper that Somalia’s al-Shebab terrorist group is badly weakened by the Kenyan-led UN force, despite its attempts to export its Jihad to create an Islamist state in the war-ravaged country.

For the researcher, the al-Shebab are desperate to perpetrate a logic of war in a new context of peace which has seen the birth of a new nation in South Sudan and the rise of oil exploration in northern Kenya. Hazard denies that al-Shebab has the capacity to recruit foreign Jihadists, arguing that it does not have the resources and is dominated by an ultra-nationalist current funded by a mafia-driven economy.

L’Humanité also looks into plans by French President Francois Hollande to arm Syria’s rebels. For the paper, if Hollande goes ahead with the deliveries, he will be propping up the same insurgents that French forces are fighting against in Mali.

The comments come amid reports relayed by Le Figaro that several rebel groups fighting with the Syrian National Coalition have defected and joined Islamist insurgents seeking the overthrow the al-Assad regime in Damascus. The right-leaning newspaper reports that more than 40,000 men have so far abandoned the main opposition coalition, whose forces stood at 100,000 soldiers. That raises the number of Islamists on the ground in Syria to 150,000 men, more than twice the troop levels of coalition forces, a development which, according to Le Figaro, complicates Western plans to support the opposition.

Libération tells the ordeal and the “life in the Syrian hell” of Italian journalist Domenico Quirico, freed after five months in the hands of Islamists close to the Syrian opposition. Quirico was sold to the Islamist insurgents by fighters loyal to the Syrian opposition coalition.

Le Figaro takes up the storm blowing in the government over the Socialists’ handling of the problem of Roma. The standoff stems from Housing Minister Cecile Duflot’s scathing attack against Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who she claims is endangering the republican pact. She was referring to statements made by Valls saying that the future of the Roma is in their countries of origin as they could not integrate into French society. Le Figaro says the standoff and Duflot’s call on President Hollande to call Valls to order has thrown the government into crisis.

The Catholic newspaper La Croix laid hands on a government report, documenting the precarious situation in which the Roma live in France. There are close to 20,000 Roma living in 394 camps across France according to official figures. La Croix notes that 3700 of them don’t have drinking water while another 1300 of them have no toilets and other sanitary facilities. Libération reacts to the dispute suggesting that says Duflot’s punch on a minister who is not “unpopular” is not very politically astute.

President François Hollande, whose political fortune is buried in a heap of unfavourable polls is basking in an unexpected thumbs up from Brussels.

Les Echos reports that the EU has praised the just unveiled French budget for 2014 calling it responsible and drafted on a plausible hypothesis. The economic newspaper commends what it calls surprises in the financial bill, notably a doubling of the 1-euro air ticket solidarity tax for French and Europe-bound flight tickets and 4 euros on tickets for other destinations, starting on the 1st of April 2014. The audio visual tax will witness a 2-euro increase to reach 133 euros on the mainland and 85 in the overseas territories. Les Echos projects that 2.3 new households will pay a new levies imposed on rich families with school-age children, while 3.8 million pensioners will fall under the bracket of income tax payers.

Libération says President Hollande may be on the verge of winning his bet on reversing France’s unemployment trend. This is after 50,000 job seekers dropped out unexpectedly from the employment fund’s jobless registers for the month of August. Libé believes that while the spectacular news remains unexplained, it is bound to give some breathing room to President Hollande who according to the paper has been “walking on wishes”.

The French leader’s visit to closed down former headquarters of the ArcelorMittal steel furnaces in Florange on Thursday attracts a flurry of comments. Libération reports that Hollande’s meeting with steel workers was “muscular but ended with a glitter of hope” after the President announced the creation of a 20-million euro steel research institute on the symbolic site.

Aujourd’hui en France says that while tempers flared, Hollande and the steel workers spoke their minds looking each other in the eye. Hollande also pledged 50 million euros to support investors looking to safeguard the economic backbone of the Lorraine region starting in 2014. Le Figaro credits him for at least accepting responsibility for what he has not delivered.

And Aujourd’hui en France tells the fairy tale story of a 20 year-old French mountain climber from the Savoy region who walked on a treasure during a skating expedition in the French Alps. The paper reports that the metallic box contained rubies and other precious stones valued 246,000 euros, probably transported in an Air India plane that crashed in the Alps in the 1960s en route from New Delhi to New York. Aujourd’hui en France says the young Savoy man has become a local hero after he handed the treasure to the police. It reports that France has made contact with Indian authorities to find the rightful heirs.