French press review 17 December 2016

The situation in Syria remains confused and confusing, with the French daily newspapers doing the best they can with the small amount of credible information available.

"Syrian regime suspends the evacuation of Aleppo," according to the main headline in Le Figaro. The paper reports that the operation, which began on Thursday, had been interrupted because armed men were refusing to respect the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

Le Figaro also reports fighting and explosions in several other Syrian cities.

The main story in left-leaning Libération offers eight verified facts against the deluge of misinformation surrounding the fall of Aleppo and the fate of the city's civilian population.

Isolated truths in a sea of lies

For example, Libé affirms that, contrary to the repeated claims of Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies, not all the rebels who have been fighting in east Aleppo are Islamic terrorists. Jihadist fighters represent a small proportion of the estimated 5,000 rebels in the city, it says, between 150 and 250 according to Syrian non-governmental organisations, as many as 900 according to Steffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy.

So, asks Libération, where does that leave the repeated claims by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad that they are, in fact, fighting against the scourge of the Islamic State armed group?

Simple nonsense, says the left-leaning daily, since there are no Islamic State fighters in east Aleppo. When the Russian air force started bombing anti-Assad forces at the end of September 2015, the first four days of bombing involved 150 strikes, only 40 of them directed against Islamic State strongholds, the vast majority targeting Assad opponents without religious affiliation.

What really happened to the last hospital in Aleppo?

Then there's the question of "the last hospital in Aleppo", an institution which international media have reported destroyed no fewer than 15 times in the past six months.

The World Health Organisation has accepted that health services and buildings were clearly considered special targets by the regime and its supporters, with 117 attacks against medical infrastructure in Aleppo in the five years of fighting, many of the buildings being repeatedly attacked, roughly refurbished, only to be attacked again.

But, says Libération, medical services continued to be available to those in besieged parts of the city even at the height of the conflict. Doctors continued to work in the basements of buildings being described as "destroyed" by the global press. Fifteen doctors and two nurses were working in east Aleppo at the moment of the recent ceasefire, for a population estimated at 100,000 struggling in a war zone.

It does appear to be true that various rebel groups used civilains as human shields, some murdering those families who attempted to leave zones still under rebel control at the height of the government offensive. Many other civilians were victims of shelling by regime forces.

The back end of a bad year, and 2017 won't be much better

Le Monde's main story wonders how François Hollande managed to get the French economy so wrong, as if the president was the sole person responsible.

French growth for the year coming to an end as we speak will be 1.2 percent, better than nothing, but a long way short of the 1.6 percent promised by France's leader. But even the national statisticians got it wrong, underestimating the impact of the summer strikes against labour law reform which not only blocked oil refineries but also slowed the chemical sector and transport.

Cereal harvests were generally poor and terrorist attacks made a huge dent in the returns from the tourism industry. All that against a background of continuing global economic stagnation.

At least unemployment is marginally down, with fewer than 10 percent of the active population out of work as the new year begins. But 2017 is not going to be much better, with most analysts regarding the government's target of 1.5 percent growth as ambitious.