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French press review 9 May 2014

Jihadi networks in Nigeria, a rising number of Jews leaving France and a chat with the miracle Afghan refugee rescued from a drifting raft on his way to England make the headlines this morning.

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Le Monde takes up the nightmare facing the 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram the Salafist armed group which objects to the education of women and which may have sold the young girls as slaves in neighbouring countries.

In an editorial the respected publication underlines the urgency of crushing the five-year insurgency following in the footsteps of the Taliban in Afghanistan and in Pakistan where female pupils were killed and their schools razed to the ground.

It salutes the outpouring of support coming from the #BringBackOurGirls' campaign, especially Michel Obama’s decision to throw her weight behind the social media drive to secure the release of the students. Le Monde also welcomes pledges of specialised military equipment, intelligence experts and commandos by France, Britain, the United States and China.

According to the paper, Nigeria incarnates the best and the worst in Africa - the continent’s most populated nation with 175 million inhabitants, a remarkably innovative and dynamic economy, an emerging urban middle class that is good for development and democracy. Yet, it points out, poverty, corruption and a weak federal government constitute real challenges for the country. These, according to the paper, are deepened by fractures between the Christian-dominated south and the predominantly Muslim north eaten up by sharia with the Jihadist cancer digging in.

For Le Monde the destructive enterprise pursued by Boko Haram goes well beyond Nigeria’s frontiers adding that France is well placed to understand this, having just lost another soldier in Mali.

Le Figaro also lauds the general mobilisation against the Islamist sect which has won a place on the US blacklist of terrorist organisations. It reports that France has decided to beef up its Serval operation in the Sahel by 3,000 men following the loss of another soldier who walked on an explosive device during a patrol in 20 kilometres outside the northern Malian town of Tessalit. It underlines, though, that the tragedy hasn’t stopped President François Hollande from declaring an end to combat operations in the west African nation.

Le Figaro commends the initiative by EU interior ministers gathering in Brussels today to tackle the problem of jihadi networks enrolling scores of European citizens to go fight a holy war in Syria. The French interior ministry reports it has documented 24 new candidates aged between 14 and 34 who have applied to go to fight in Syria. They include eight women, identified through the hotline set up by the government to track candidates for jihad.

According to Le Monde, the government's inability to stem the tide has forced desperate parents to make the perilous journey to Syria to go find their children and bring them home.

Le Monde publishes an appeal by Hollande for a massive participation in the 25 May European elections. He urges eurosceptics to understand that the end of the euro would lead to implacable austerity, the disappearance of financial solidarity and abandon France to the mercy of financial speculators. .

The Communist Party newspaper L’Humanité talks up its own campaign for a massive turnout in the European elections, not to give a blank check to the liberals in Brussels but to push for a new Europe void of austerity.

Le Figaro raises an alarm about an "aliyah" or "ascension" of Jews leaving France to settle in Israel. The right-wing newspaper says the numbers leaped to 3,280 over the past year with 854 more since the start of 2014. That represents an increase of 70 per cent as opposed to previous figures, overtaking the United States which has a Jewish population 10 times that of France. The overall Jewish exodus from France makes up just one per cent of French Jews but Natan Sharansky, who heads the Jewish Agency which encourages aliyah, attributes the trend to perceived sentiments of insecurity in France and the worsening economic climate, according to Le Figaro.

Libération has managed to find the Afghan miracle man fished out of a drifting raft off the coast of Sangatte on his way to the United Kingdom. Assef Husseinkhail told the paper how dejected he is returning to the same spot after wandering for 14 years. Libé notes that, while everyone has kept reminding the 33-year-old how lucky he was to be found, his mind is already made up to try again. The left-leaning paper describes Husseinkhail as a symbol of the distress facing 612,000 refugees who have applied for asylum in 44 industrialised countries.

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