Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi at PSG’s Ligue 1 match against Reims, August 29th. © Franck Fife / AFP

With its signing of Argentine superstar Lionel Messi this summer, and its money-no-object refusal to agree the 180-million-euro transfer to Real Madrid of its French star forward Kylian Mbappé, football club Paris Saint-Germain’s Qatari owners, apparently immune to the financial effects of the Covid-19 crisis, once again demonstrated their unbridled ambitions in diplomacy through sport. As Jérôme Latta reports, the backdrop is the ever more deregulated structure of European football.

Shops in the Andorran town of El Pas de la Casa enjoy brisk year-round business with customers and smugglers attracted by its low VAT rates. © Photo Emmanuel Riondé pour Mediapart

The Pyrenees mountains separating France and Spain have long been a crossing route for smugglers of all kinds of wares, which today range from cigarettes to elvers. But the 623-kilometre-long border between the two countries, definitively traced in 1866, has also never been a barrier for the centuries-old exchanges, local alliances and regulations established between the communities living on either side. Emmanuel Riondé reports. 

Members of the Islamic State group’s Afghan branch, IS-K, paraded after being taken prisoner by government forces in Afghanistan in 2017. © Zabihullah Ghazi / ANADOLU AGENCY via AFP

The US military has said its airstrike on Sunday on a vehicle in Kabul has prevented a new attack on the capital’s airport by the Afghan branch of the so-called Islamic State (IS) group who claimed responsibility for last Thursday’s suicide bombing there which left an estimated 170 people dead. But just who are the Afghan IS branch, known as the IS-K? Jean-Pierre Perrin details their history, beginning in 2014 when Pakistani jihadists crossed into Afghanistan and soon became a rival for the Taliban.

A Doctors Without Borders midwife examines a baby at the French NGO’s maternity hospital in Khost, south-east Afghanistan, August 2018. © JUSTINE GERARDY / AFP

Most of the humanitarian aid organisations until now active in Afghanistan say they want to continue with their missions following the Taliban takeover of the country. But that prospect faces major challenges, notably due to the volatile security situation, the uncertainty over the Taliban’s future policy towards them, and the collapse of Afghanistan’s banking system. Justine Brabant reports.

French interior minister Gérald Darmanin, July 22nd 2021. © Photo Thierry Zoccolan / AFP

Following an investigation by Mediapart which revealed how the newly appointed head of the gendarmerie in France’s South Pacific territory of New Caledonia had been convicted of domestic violence, Colonel Éric Steiger was forced to resign his prestigious post last Friday. Despite the public outrage prompted by the case, and notably how the colonel’s hierarchy were well aware of his conviction, French interior minister Gérald Darmanin, in a radio interview on Tuesday morning, denounced a “cabal” against Steiger, who has admitted committing violence against his ex-wife, adding “I am not for witch-hunts”. Matthieu Suc, Pascale Pascariello and Antton Rouget report.

One association in south-east France offers equine therapy to women victims of violence. © DR / Femmes répit

According to a 2021 report by French senators, half of all murders of women in France are committed in rural regions, where just one third of the country’s female population reside. The plight of women victims of domestic violence is particularly acute in rural areas where isolation, local taboos and the relative scarcity of public services combine to aggravate their distress. Élodie Potente reports from the Drôme, a rural south-east département (county), where local associations and volunteers provide help for victims amid the absence of adequate state support.

Screen grab from June 19th 2001 showing members of Al Qaeda marching at a training camp in Afghanistan. © HO/AFP

The Taliban's return to power in Kabul has raised fears about the potential knock-on effect that their victory will have in other parts of the world. French intelligence services believe that here the main danger is likely to come from the morale boost it will give to terrorists or potential terrorists already based in France. Matthieu Suc has spoken to members of the intelligence community to assess the potential threats following recent events in Afghanistan.

Leaders of the Afghan resistance at Peshawar. © Photo DR / Twitter Thomas Hegghammer

With the Taliban in control after the dramatic fall of Kabul, signalling the defeat of the United States after a 20-year war, the eyes of the world are now on Afghanistan. Mediapart looks back at the recent history of the country and in particular how its arid Hindu Kush mountain range became the birthplace of global jihad. As Jean-Pierre Perrin reports in the first of a series of articles, it all began with the arrival of the Palestinian preacher Abdallah Azzam in Peshawar, Pakistan, at the start of the 1980s.

The health pass can be obtained in several ways, with a vaccination certificate, a negative test in the last 72 hours or a certificate showing that you have had Covid within the last six months. © ROB ENGELAAR / ANP via AFP

From Monday August 9th the French government made it obligatory to have a health pass for anyone wanting to enter a range of establishments or access services, from cafés to restaurants, cinemas to libraries and high-speed trains to hospitals. This meant thousands of people have been trying to get a QR code to prove they have been vaccinated twice, had a recent negative Covid test or that they had recovered from the illness in the last six months and thus had antibodies. For some, this has meant a long and frustrating time dealing with the complexities of a new layer of French bureaucracy. Khedidja Zerouali has been talking to people who have struggled to navigate their way around this brave new world of health rules.

Louis Pasteur in his office, in about 1890. © Photo Dornac et Cie / Wikimedia commons

When in 1885 French scientist Louis Pasteur successfully treated a nine-year-old boy called Joseph Meister who had been bitten by a rabid dog it marked a turning point in the development of vaccines. But the medical breakthrough was also the launchpad for a global expansion of institutes bearing their founder's name which became a spearhead for French influence around the world. As part of a summer series on the history of vaccines, Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis looks at the pioneering work of France's Louis Pasteur and his nationalistic rivalry with Germany's Robert Koch.

Arbonne, July 13th 2021. Hundreds of Basque farmers, with their tractors, occupy farmland in a bid to stop it being sold for leisure purposes. © Photo Pierre Larrieu / Hans Lucas via AFP

A rich heiress from Paris recently agreed to buy a 15-hectare farm near the upmarket south-west France coastal resort of Biarritz for more than three million euros. The potential loss of more farmland in a region already very short of suitable arable and market gardening acreage immediately sparked outrage among farming and rural groups. Local farmers and activists have now occupied the land and are hoping to get the sale cancelled. They are also working with local MPs and senators in France's Basque region to change the law so that wealthy outsiders can no longer exploit legal loopholes to buy farmland and put it to non-agricultural use. Antton Rouget reports.

On the ferry across the Rhine, between France and Germany. © Pascal Bastien pour Mediapart

The Bas-Rhin département or county in north-east France, which borders Germany, is dominated politically by the Right and far-right. Mediapart visited the region to test the mood on the ground and found that more and more local people, and especially those in rural areas, are choosing to abstain from voting. Quietly, and with no fanfare, swathes of people in this area are saying a discreet farewell to the world of politics. Mathilde Goanec reports from the towns of Drusenheim and Haguenau.

Léonie Bischoff is a Swiss artist and creator of graphic novels, the latest of which is a highly original account of the key episodes in the turbulent life of French-Cuban-American writer Anaïs Nin, based on the contents of her most intimate, unexpurgated diaries. As part of a summer series in which Mediapart journalists highlight those books published over the last 12 months which have particularly caught their eye, Dan Israel reviews Bischoff’s Anaïs Nin, Sur la mer des mensonges (Anaïs Nin, on the sea of lies), a seven-years-in-the-making, no-holds-barred story of Nin’s adventures and quest for personal freedom.

Cédric Chouviat pinned to the ground by police officers in Paris on January 3rd 2020. © Document Mediapart

On the morning of January 3rd 2020, a 42-year-old deliveryman, Cédric Chouviat, was flagged down for a roadside check by police close to the Eiffel Tower in central Paris. After a brief altercation, he was arrested and pinned to the ground by police using a stranglehold, causing him to suffocate and suffer a fatal cardiac arrest, despite his pleas for them to let go. Although there is compelling evidence of the excessive, brutal manhandling of Chouviat by the officers implicated in the events, three of whom have been formally placed under investigation, French interior minister Gérald Darmanin recently wrote to Chouviat’s family dismissing their call for the officers to be suspended from duty while awaiting the outcome of an ongoing judicial probe. Pascale Pascariello reports.

The setting for the political rally held by Éric Zemmour on December 5th 2021 at Villepinte near Paris. © Photo Sébastien Calvet / Mediapart

How is it that 'antifas' or anti-fascist activists are now described as “fascist” in certain quarters of the French media? Or that anti-racists have become the new racists? Lucie Delaporte looks at the way in which the French far-right have long subverted the meaning of words in a deliberate attempt to make extremist labels meaningless.