How to explain the new tensions between France and Algeria? – LCI

It is a new episode of tensions which animates relations between France and Algeria. After the recall of its ambassador Mohamed Antar-Daoud for consultation in Paris justified by “a” particularly inadmissible situation caused by (some) irresponsible remarks ” Emmanuel Macron, Algiers announced Sunday to close its airspace to French military planes.

To explain these tensions between the two countries, which will soon commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the Algerian war and its independence, we must look at the “words not denied” by Emmanuel Macron reported by The world. During a meeting with twenty young descendants of protagonists of the Algerian War, the French head of state declared that Algeria was built after its independence in 1962 on “a memorial rent”, maintained by “the politico-military system”. He also criticized “a completely rewritten official history” by Algiers who “does not rely on truths” but on “a speech which is based on a hatred of France”.

Among the other reasons for Algeria’s irritation: the reduction in visas granted to Algerians announced this week by the French president, which earned the recall of the Algerian ambassador to Paris, and according to local media, his way to describe President Abdelmadjid Tebboune as “caught in a very harsh system” and to speak of the French as “of the only colonizers”, forgetting the Ottoman domination between the 16th and 18th centuries.

However, the question of memory is sensitive on the Algerian side “because it touches on the history, soul and identity of the Algerian people”, Hassen Kacimi, a specialist in migration issues, told AFP. While the two countries had agreed in May 2020 to jointly carry out memory work with a view to “reconciliation”, the report submitted in January 2021 in this context by Benjamin Stora was rejected by Algeria, which accused him of not being “goal” and criticized the absence of “official recognition by France of war crimes and against humanity perpetrated during the 130 years of the occupation of Algeria”.

On Saturday, the Algerian presidency therefore finally considered that the position taken by Emmanuel Macron “runs counter to the principles which should govern a possible Algerian-French cooperation in the matter of memory (and) has the incorrigible defect of tending towards the promotion of an apologetic version of colonialism.”

Franco-Algerian relations have already seen other episodes of tension in recent years. In April 2021, Prime Minister Jean Castex canceled at the last moment a visit, at the request of Algiers, dissatisfied, according to sources informed by AFP, with a delegation too small for their liking. The year before, in May 2020, the Algerian ambassador in Paris had also been recalled after the broadcast of a documentary by two French public channels on the pro-democracy demonstrations (Hirak) in Algeria.

And one of the important crises that marked the relationship between the two countries dates back to February 23, 2005, when the French Parliament adopted a law recognizing “the positive role of colonization”. A law subsequently repealed but which had caused the cancellation of a Treaty of friendship strongly desired by President Jacques Chirac and his Algerian counterpart Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Their relations had also experienced moments of appeasement recently, as in July 2020, when Paris made a gesture towards Algiers by returning the skulls of 24 Algerian resistance fighters beheaded in the 19th century during revolts in southern Algeria against the French occupant.

A little earlier, in March 2020, France also recognized for the first time that Algerian lawyer Ali Boumendjel, who died in March 1957, was tortured and killed by the French army during the Battle of Algiers. Finally, Emmanuel Macron also, during his presidential campaign in 2017, qualified colonization as a “crime against humanity”, during a visit to Algiers, earning him praise from the Algerian press.