Western leaders gathered in Paris yesterday to agree action against the so-called Islamic State (Isis) are still ignoring the roots of the crisis engulfing the Middle East.

Reconnaissance flights over Iraq by the French air force indicate the country may soon follow Washington’s lead in trying to bomb the extremist rebel group into the ground.

This strategy is hardly likely to work. Air strikes by the Nato powers are notoriously inaccurate.

The trail of civilian corpses left by Western bombers in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, where the victims of so-called precision strikes have included whole families attending weddings or simply living under the same roof as a “suspect,” has seen support for the Taliban and al-Qaida grow.

It is almost impossible to work out the proportion of drone strike dead who never had any connection with terrorist activity, since the US drapes the blanket term “suspected militant” over any male victim deemed old enough to be a combatant.

It is precisely this sort of indiscriminate killing that has fuelled recruitment to terror organisations and it can be relied upon to do so again.

No seat at the summit was given to Syria, where Isis first rose to prominence as part of the Western-backed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Since the territory controlled by Isis straddles the Syria-Iraq border and the Syrian army is still one of the only forces holding its own against it, attempting to defeat the murderous group without involving Damascus is a fool’s errand.

France’s own strategy is a mess. 

Paris suggests it will bomb Isis in Iraq but not in Syria in case the latter strengthens Assad’s hand in the civil war there — an admission if any were needed of the organisation’s domination of the Syrian opposition.

But Isis is a single militant group which has, courtesy of funds and weapons funnelled in by the West and the Gulf autocracies, taken control of a continuous territory. 

Fighting it in Iraq while giving it tacit backing in Syria is absurd. 

The scale of the crisis caused by the rise of one of the most bloodthirsty and sectarian terrorist forces in history cannot be overstated.

Syrian, Iraqi and Kurdish armies fighting to defend their people from its brutal assault do need international support.

But that support should come via a legitimate international body — the United Nations — and should involve all parties battling Isis on the ground.

The US has so far done all it can to avoid going via the UN — presumably in order to shut out governments critical of its role in provoking the carnage. 

Instead a ramshackle “coalition of the willing” is being assembled. It includes the Saudi Arabian dictatorship, which funds Islamist terror across the Middle East and promotes a poisonous Wahhabi ideology akin to that of Isis.

A pledge to fight the group “by all means necessary” does not appear to be backed by any co-ordinated strategy, with different countries continuing to take different stances on what action is necessary after the summit.

A selective Western bombing campaign will not defeat Isis. Nor will it do anything to restore stability to a region the West has set aflame.