French press review 13 September 2014

Ebola is a wound that will not heal in west Africa. Hollande visits Iraq. A new war in the Middle East promises to be tough-going. And there’s good news and bad news for French sport.

 We begin with Libération’s special supplement on the difficulties of eradicating the ebola virus which has killed more than 2,000 people and infected 3,000 more in west Africa.

The left-leaning paper says that, since its appearance in 1976, the virus has hit Africa repeatedly becoming a wound that will not heal, with no vaccines or anti-retroviral drugs expected in the short term.

Libération’s coverage zooms in on Guinea, badly hit by ebola in August. According to Libé the authorities there are struggling to mobilise the people, who are more preoccupied by electricity cuts than the spread of the virus.

In an editorial Libé holds that, apart from wars, the epidemic is probably the most stressful catastrophe ever experienced on the continent, especially as it has reemerged from Africa’s past at a time everyone thought it had been eradicated.

For the paper, while the tragic wars of 2014 raging in Europe, the Middle East and Africa have rational explanations, such as territorial conquest, a clash of ego or religions, epidemics provoke all sorts of fantasies and a return to ancestral beliefs, awakening irrational fears such as divine retribution, complicating the work of health professionals and arousing ostracism.

According to Libération, ebola is the disease of poor countries where dilapidated infrastructure, misery and precarious health conditions amplify contamination. No surprise, it concludes, that the two most-affected countries, Liberia and Sierra Leone, are countries devastated by civil war and their people subjected to misery.

Le Figaro takes up President François Hollande’s visit to Iraq, highlighting the pledge for military and political support he delivered to the country’s new government to fight the “enemy without borders” threatening to decimate the region’s Christians and overrun the country.

The right-wing paper reports from Ankawa where it says Christian refugees are begging France to rescue them. More than 10,000 Christians have filed for asylum at the French consulate in Arbil, the capital of the Iraqi region of Kurdistan, according to Le Figaro.

Le Monde comments on the risks of the new US-led military intervention in the Middle East. President Barack Obama, it claims, came to power promising to end the two unfortunate foreign adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq he has failed, it argues, as Washington is again drawing battle lines for a long war, even though it will be fought not by ground troops but by fighter jets and drones.

But, for the paper, dismantling the Islamic State armed group, which controls vast portions of Iraq and Syria, will be no easy business. It points to the fact that the United States is intervening in two civil wars in Syria and Iraq and in a larger strategic regional religious conflict pitting the Arab world’s Sunni Muslim majority against the minority Shia, who are backed by the region’s non-Arab power Iran.

For Le Monde, while Washington enjoys the support of American public opinion as well as that of its Western allies, the 10-nation Arab coalition backing him have hidden agendas, especially Saudi Arabia, which is opposed to any collaboration with Iran.

It was a Friday of mixed fortunes for French sports.

L’Equipe crows about the dream start of the French teamin the Davis Cup semi-final in Paris with Jo Wilfried Tsonga and Richard Gasquet firing the French team into a two-nil lead over the Czech Republic.

But French dreams of reaching the final of the Basketball World Cup in Spain ended when they lost to Serbia 90-85.

The French let their dream slip away, writes Le Figaro, their shock victory over Spain, the tournament’s hosts very much in the back of its mind. L’Equipe says they have a chance of grabbing an unprecedented third place when they take on Lithuania in Madrid tonight.