Algeria and France’s historical opportunism
Different goals converge when it comes to the opportunistic exploitation of history and the attempt to gain political advantage from its events.
Algeria and France are ingratiated in a joint “hypocrisy party” around what has become known as the memory file. The great hype and controversy surrounding the issue almost suggests to those who follow its details that time has stopped in the two countries in the French colonial era in Algeria which spans the period from the 1830’s and the 1960’s, with all its confrontations, violence, victims and bloodshed.
From the Algerian side, one cannot understand the insistence on reopening the files of the colonial era and the insistence in asking France to apologise, regardless of the goals and political motivations behind it.
These goals and motivations are essentially to distract people from the current realities resulting from six decades of independence, during which valuable time was wasted and enormous energy was squandered but nothing important was accomplished in comparison to what could have been accomplished and what other countries that also went through the experience of colonialism and fought a freedom struggle to rid themselves of its yoke have achieved. Not possessing the natural resources of Algeria, many of these other countries invested in their people and succeeded in doing so with great success.
The National Liberation Front (FLN) party has been clinging to power for six decades and living off a mix of pan-Arabist and Islamist slogans shed long ago by their countries of origin. These countries have instead chosen the path of wealth-producing rule instead of just relying on oil revenue. These countries opted for the development of their societies and their prosperity and future welfare. Decision-makers in Algeria have stayed glued to the past, invoking its “glories” to conceal the shortcomings of the present and cover up their inability to achieve new “glories.”
There is no nation without a past and without glories which gain moral value with the passage of time and can be used as a catalyst for more work, effort and achievement.
But these glories cannot be frozen in time and lived on endlessly, thus becoming a heavy burden and a barrier to development, which is the case of Algeria considering the way it deals with the colonial era and its files.
With due realism, one can only wonder what the importance is of “memory files” for the younger generation of Algerians whose interests, needs and aspirations are derived from their generation’s times and realities, and are radically different from the interests and aspirations of their predecessors.
What would be the answer of the vast majority of Algerian youth if asked what they would prefer: France apologising to their country for the colonial era or instead facilitating their access to entry visas and living on French soil?
The clearest answer to this question is provided by the thousands of young Algerians who wade through the Mediterranean Sea every year on rickety and rudimentary boats in the hope of reaching the coasts of Italy, France and Spain. Some of them make it, many are arrested, while others end up as food for Mediterranean fish.
On the French side, especially during the era of President Emmanuel Macron, decision-makers dealt with the memory file with as much opportunism as their Algerian partners.
Macron, who is watching the rapid decline of his country’s role in its traditional spheres of influence on the African continent, seems to be driven by the disastrous results of a series of fatal mistakes committed by successive French governments in Africa, up to the cardinal sin of former President Nicolas Sarkozy in Libya. These mistakes put French troops at the risk of being swamped in the sands of neighbouring Mali.
The spark is now nearer to the uranium mines in Niger, the biggest source of this precious metal used as fuel to generate three-quarters of France’s electrical energy needs.
These considerations made Macron lose the ability to decide on Algeria’s demands regarding the colonial era. While he does not have the courage to close the door and close the file, thus ending all hopes for the restoration of his country’s influence in Africa from the Algerian gate, he cannot meet Algeria’s demands, which would mean recognition that his country committed colonial crimes that harmed its image.
By the same token, he would be presenting an electoral gift to the rising far right led by Marine Le Pen, behind whom there is a large audience that still believes in “French Algeria” and considers the signing of the Evian Treaty, which established the independence of Algeria, as a historic crime against the French nation, not to mention the attitude of that public when it comes to apologising to Algeria and granting it compensation for the colonial era.
In view of the inability of the Algerian and French sides to agree on a compromise formula to move beyond the past with a future-driven approach that establishes a tangibly beneficial partnership, instead of continuing the hollow debate over legal issues that have become part of the history, the two sides prefer to persist in an implicit and systematic agreement on keeping the memory file open and investing in it each in its own way, despite the meager results that both have achieved from this exercise.
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