My personal physician — one of Britain’s most renowned doctors and recipient of one of the highest honours from the late Queen Elizabeth II — always finds time to chat about things other than medicine the moment he remembers I am a journalist. During my last visit, he raised the issue of the large-scale Iraqi money laundering that has become a quietly tolerated problem in Britain.

He told me, ‘We Britons are not happy about this smuggled Iraqi money entering our country with such blatant governmental complicity. And for a simple reason: it never goes into our education or health sectors.”

He is right. Money has no value if citizens do not feel its impact. A nation’s capital does not grow unless its funds flow into schools and hospitals.

The French, for example, are far happier with Dr Yasmine Belkaid than with any Arab money invested in entertainment, tourism or sports. To them, she represents a permanent and inexhaustible source of health capital, unlike the billions invested in leisure that disappear without trace.

Belkaid, who was recently honoured by the Government of Dubai with the ‘Arab Pioneers’ award in the medical category, may indeed represent a model of a successful Arab woman in the West. But that is of little relevance to ordinary people in France. What matters to them is what this Algerian scientist has given them,........

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