The conditions under which the fight against the Islamic State group (IS) is conducted in Syria have undergone a “profound change,” according to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, and this development has sparked concern in France.
After the Syrian transitional government reached an agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the governance of the country’s northeast on January 30, Paris dispatched Barrot on a whistle-stop tour of Syria and Iraq on Thursday, February 5, and Friday, February 6, to meet with all the players in the anti-IS fight. In Erbil, he met with Kurdish leaders from both countries.
“I am on an anti-Daesh mission,” Barrot said, using the Arabic-language acronym for IS, while speaking to his Iraqi counterpart, Fuad Hussein, in Baghdad on Thursday afternoon. Just like earlier that day, when he spoke after meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani in Damascus, the French minister brought up the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, which had been planned in Syria and Iraq, and stressed that “French citizens’ security is also at stake here.”
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