French press review 24 September 2014

For the second consecutive day the Islamic State (IS) armed group dominates the French front pages.

Centrist Le Monde looks back to yesterday morning's bomb and missile attacks by American units on targets inside Syria.

The Paris paper notes the remarkable level of support from Arab countries, including the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Clearly, the emergence of IS has galvanised regional governments and forced a rethink of local allegiances.

Le Monde's editorial says that France is now at war and needs to accept that fact, with all its implications, instead of trying to hide behind the Americans.

The centrist paper warns that the conflict will be long, that it will cost lives, even French lives, a reference to Hervé Gourdel, the French hiker kidnapped by an IS affiliate in Algeria last weekend and the potential victims of the jihad against French interests and citizens demanded by the IS leadership.

Le Monde also says that this war will not be won by military muscle. The current interventions are probably necessary to slow down the territorial ambitions of IS, which is committed to the abolition of all national borders in the Middle East. But, says Le Monde, the ultimate victory will come from the Muslim Arab world itself, when governments accept the need for the profound political and ideological reforms that are the only long-term answer to the scourge of islamic fundamentalism.

Le Figaro is not in favour of any geopolitical finesse. The conservative paper's headline declares that France will not give in to Islamic terrorism. Le Figaro says that the threat posed by IS has not only forced an increased level of vigilance on local security agencies, it has also created a climate of national unity on the political scene.

The right-wing paper's editorial is headlined "Global war" and it poses the chilling question of a potential "coalition of the caliphates", a swathe of fundamentalist movements following the same broad policy from Afghanistan to Nigeria.

Left-leaning Libération's main headline wonders if this is "A just war?" The question masks the paper's main concerns, which is how long this conflict is going to last, the definition of allied objectives and the likely extent of French involvement.

An analyst says we are now dealing with the consequences of a decade of mistakes but are still not attacking the root causes of the problem. Worse, the enemy is extremely mobile, capable of establishing new bases, finding new sponsors, at the drop of an allied missile. The allies have brought a gun to a knife-fight.

Catholic La Croix attempts to understand the ideology and strategy of the IS. The ideology is hardline Salafism, broadly a determination to return humanity to the social and material conditions prevalent during the lifetime of the Prophet Mohamed, 14 centuries ago. Their strategy is a lot more up-to-date, involving the use of sophisticated weaponry and mediaeval barbarism to destabilise Middle Eastern governments with a view to establishing an Islamic caliphate.

The whole question of French involvement in the conflict will be debated today at the National Assembly.

Communist L'Humanité puts IS, Gaza and the Ukraine conflict in the same bloodstained basket and lays it at the door of the United Nations.

According to L'Humanité, the global organisation has allowed itself to be sidelined and no longer has an audible voice in the debate on peace. And the reason is simple, says the paper, quoting its founder Jean Jaurès, "Capitalism carries war in its wake as clouds carry storms." Our current economic model has created islands of wealth in an ocean of poverty, says L'Humanité and we'll go on having wars until that's sorted out.

And, in a world ravaged by capitalist storms, the shower of striking Air France pilots are still adding their own drop of drizzle, behaving like well-dressed railworkers and refusing to drive their planes for the 10th straight day. The government says management have agreed to shelve the latest low-cost proposals, management say they have not, at least, not yet. The strike, perhaps unsurprisingly given that level of dialogue, continues.