When this is over, if ever it is, they will mark the long-awaited day with televised displays of emotion and solemnity. Ministers, in their dark blue suits, will congratulate themselves on having won the war.
The former President of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, was in constant contact with President Macron throughout the Covid-19 crisis. In March, at the height of the pandemic, the former President had advised the current President to form a “government of public salvation and solidarity” at the reopening of parliament, in order to face the post-Covidian political and economic challenges.
According to a report by the National Intelligence Council, submitted to President Macron, on the French ISIS fighters exfiltered from Syria, some 40 of them have joined jihadist groups in Libya. As a result of this geographical rapprochement, they are a major source of concern, as they could fuel plans for illegal returns to France.
The pandemic that has hit the planet must make us realize that nothing will ever be the same again. There was a pre-coronavirus. There’s now going to be a geopolitical and geostrategic post-coronavirus. Today, several factors are cause for concern in Western chanceries: An American withdrawal from world affairs, especially in the Middle East, leaving the field open to Russia and Iran; China’s all-round offensive and divisions in Europe.
Emile Habibi, a Palestinian writer from Haïfa who stayed on in Israel after 1948, had coined a great word to describe the state of mind of those individuals who experience ambiguity on a daily basis: peptimist. It is a mixture of hope and weariness, somewhere at a juncture between optimism and pessimism. This is a most fitting word to use these days in light of the consequences the epidemic is having on religions.
A recent US Department of Defense report submitted to the United States Congress concludes that though the US and Taliban representatives signed an agreement on February 29 as a move to end the conflict in Afghanistan, a number of subsequent events has raised questions over whether the peace process would take place.
