Paris is the last Western capital to make the fight against terrorism its spearhead in the region, at the risk of creating a “security rent” in Iraq and Syria, and while the competition is attracting on the Exports of weapons to the Gulf countries, explains the researcher in an interview with the “world.
words collected by Elise Vincent
While Emmanuel Macron must go to Jordan, from December 20 to 22 – where French soldiers are still deployed as part of the “Chammal” operation – the terrorist threat is almost locally eradicated and France should Repeat his strategy, explains Héloïse Fayet. The researcher at the French Institute of International Relations, a specialist in the Armed Forces of the Middle East, published, in mid-November, a study that dissects French strategic posture in the region. France in the Middle East, while all eyes are turned to Ukraine?
Today, France is present in the Middle East around two axes: the fight against terrorism and the protection of its access. Whether it is its access to energies, with the supply of hydrocarbons, or its access to the sea, from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and to the Arab-Persian Gulf, the gateway to the Indian Ocean.
To achieve these objectives, France has around 2,000 soldiers in the Middle East, making it its second deployment ground after Africa. This is organized around three poles: the “Chammal” operation, which, since 2014, brings together 600 soldiers divided between Iraq, Syria and Jordan; Lebanon, with 650 soldiers within the Finul, the interim strength of the United Nations; Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates [water], which serves as a logistics platform and where 650 soldiers are prepositioned. These are the heart of the French position in the area. Finally, France has embassies in all the countries of the Middle East, except in Syria and Yemen, where they closed in 2012 and 2015.
Reduce themselves in the Iraqi-Syrian area, are the military deployed by France still adequate?
The terrorist threat is indeed almost eradicated. More than 1,100 attacks were claimed by Daesh [Islamic State] in Iraq in 2021, but this figure decreases from year to year. Daesh is almost no longer able to coordinate large -scale attacks. The group remains a social, even political threat, in Iraq and Syria. But these are not problems that the “Chammal” operation or the French special forces will be able to solve with the Task Force [Intervention Force] Hydra.
Iraqi, Kurds, even Lebanese partners, recognize that they need less money or human resources than very specific training, delivery of equipment on specific segments and political aid to secure their State or their local administrations. But, for the moment, France is not positioned, or very little, on this segment, for lack of effective levers. It is symptomatic of a form of stagnation of France’s strategic thought in the Middle East since the peak of the terrorist threat, in 2015.
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