Madame Le Cerf
The relationship between France and its former colony, Algeria, has (despite Emmanuel Macron’s crawling) been poor for some time but recently it has descended from bad to worse before plummeting to utterly dire.
The current President, Adelmadjid Tebboune, has tried to combat his unpopularity by designating the old colonial enemy and its “macronito-sioniste” government as a scapegoat responsible for all the ills that plague his very badly run country.
After a debilitating stroke in 2013, the former President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was rarely seen in public and was rumoured to be unable to speak and leaks from various highly placed officials suggested that he was unable to govern effectively. Despite this, he put himself forward for a fourth term in 2014 (after yet another constitutional amendment to allow him to run) and in April 2014 he was re-elected with a stupendous 81% of the vote! Several opposition parties boycotted the election, resulting in allegations of fraud. During this final fourth term of office he was hardly seen at all and it was said that, due to his inability to speak, all his communications with his ministers were by letter.
Nevertheless a fifth term was contemplated. In February 2019 a press release signed by Bouteflika announcing that he would seek a fifth consecutive term provoked widespread discontent. National protests on February 22nd organised through social media were the largest in Algeria for 18 years. On March 11th 2019 Bouteflika announced that he would not seek a fifth term but this was not enough to end the protests. He then announced that he would resign by 28th April but pressure from the Army Chief of Staff ultimately forced him to resign on 2nd April.
But the protests, called the Revolution of Smiles or Hirak, that had started on 16th April were not so easily quelled. Accumulated grievances and aspirations were at the root of the protest movement. Decades long economic stagnation, widespread unemployment and chronic corruption fuelled the discontent. The protests continued through the spring and summer of 2019. On 15th September the interim government announced that there would be a presidential election on 12th December. Despite this, demonstrations calling for the resignations of the former Bouteflika government clique continued. Prominent opposition politicians were detained on the usual charges of “attacking national unity”.
Despite widespread popular opposition, the presidential election was held on 12th December. The official turn out was 39.88%; although the actual turn out has been put as low as 8%!
Adelmadjid Tebboune, the army’s favoured candidate was officially elected in the first round with 58.13% of the valid votes.
Despite noises about a “serious dialogue” with the Hirak movement and the freeing of over 70 Hirak detainees, the Tebboune regime has carried on business as usual with many of Bouteflika’s old guard hanging on to positions of influence. When the pandemic started and the Hirak suspended outdoor protests, the authorities tightened the vice on the movement, jailing some of its leading figures and prosecuting dozens for their peaceful posts on online social media. A new constitution adopted in November 2020 was opposed by many on the grounds that it contained few reforms to the repressive regime.
The movement gradually fizzled out, despite renewed demonstrations for the second anniversary in February 2022, leaving the Tebboune government of “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” in place.
Relations between France and Algeria have been more or less strained ever since Algeria won a bloody war of liberation from French colonial rule. But Emmanuel Macron thought he could fix that even if it meant that France had to grovel a bit. In 2017, shortly after the beginning of his first 5-year term as President, he declared that the French colonisation of Algeria had been “a crime against humanity” and begged for pardon for the Harkis (the Algerians who had supported France during the war and been forced to flee for their lives along with the colonialist Pieds Noirs). His request was brutally rejected by Bouteflika. Subsequent acknowledgements by Macron of France’s role in in the torture and murder of Algerian nationalists and the serious consequences of French nuclear testing in the Algerian Sahara along with denunciation of the crimes of Maurice Papon in October 1961 also failed to melt the Algerian government’s frostiness. Thus rebuffed, Macron made a 180° turn and on 30th September 2021 he welcomed a delegation of young French people of Algerian origin with the apparent intent to appease the “Blessure mémorielle” of the Algerian war. (This is a term used here to refer to the trauma experienced by both sides during the colonisation of Algeria and the war waged to end that colonisation). But his audience was stunned as, instead of his usual litany of apologies for French behaviour, he denounced an “official history that was being totally rewritten by the Algerian government” which “was not founded on truth but on a discourse, which, it had to be said, was based on a hatred of France”.
Many asked what was the point of the previous grovelling to the Algerian regime. Others pointed out that it brought to the surface the fact that the Tebboune government had never had any intention of clasping the hand offered by France. Trapped in the resentment which he seemed to consider his only political capital, Tebboune demonstrated that he was incapable of engaging in rational diplomacy with the French state.
This diplomatic crisis was severely deepened in July 2024 when Macron recognised Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara. Then followed the arrest in mid-November of the French Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, accused by the regime of “attacking national unity” after he had given an interview to “Frontiers”, considered to be a hard right magazine. Sansal had been a thorn in the side of the Algerian regime for many years. He had criticised its corruption, denial of freedom and Islamism.
Sansal had recently been given French nationality and was planning to settle permanently here. Unwisely, he returned to Algiers to settle his affairs there. 75 years old and suffering from prostate cancer, his chances of long term survival were not good. On 27th March he was condemned to 5 years imprisonment and a fine of €3,470. He had been prevented from mounting a proper defence because his French lawyer was not allowed into Algeria on the grounds that he was Jewish! Sansal had been told to choose a non-Jew. He was found guilty of the original charge of attacking national unity, the security of the state, the integrity of its territory and the stability of its institutions. This was mainly due to his having supported the position of Morocco against that of Algeria in the matter of the sovereignty of Western Sahara. Another charge of providing sensitive information to a foreign power is under investigation.
Sansal has appealed his conviction and his lawyer has asked for a “humanitarian gesture” to liberate his client, saying that the appeal need not prevent Tebboune from pardoning Sansal, and, if he were freed he would advise him to drop the appeal.
But, despite Macron, during a long telephone call the day before Eid, undertaking to restart diplomacy between the two nations and asking Tebboune to provide “a gesture of clemency and humanity” Sansal remains in prison-albeit in a prison hospital wing.
One of the principal bones of contention between Algeria and France is Algerian delay and sometimes outright refusal in taking back their nationals who are under a OQTF– ordre de quitter le territoire Français– deportation order. It often takes months for Algeria to supply the necessary papers for these undesirables to be readmitted to their own country. They sometimes require papers even for those who have not destroyed their own original passports.
This problem came to an explosive head recently in the case of one Boualem N; an Algerian influencer who spent his time riling up part of the Algerian population of France against another part, calling for violence against those Algerians who demonstrate against the Tebboune government. The Interior Ministry acted swiftly, taking away his “titre de séjour”, holding him in the detention centre at Nîmes and two days later putting him on a plane bound for Algiers. Algeria sent him back on the next flight without explanation and despite the fact that he has a valid biometric Algerian passport. Although he has lived in France for 36 years, Boualem N has been travelling between the two counties with no problems.
Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister, declared that Algeria was seeking to humiliate France The Algerian foreign minister riposted by attacking “the hateful far-right and its henchmen in the French government”, no doubt pointing the finger at Retaiileau, who has been into stealing the clothes of the RN when it comes to immigration and the problems with Muslim Brotherhood entryism.
Jumping on the bandwagon the far left have accused Retailleau of provoking Algeria – Marine Tondelier, secretary general of EELV (the Greens) even going so far as to accuse him of treating people like parcels.
On the right there have been accusations that the government is soft and is not doing anything like enough either to get Sansal released or to put pressure on Algeria to take back its unwanted citizens. The actions open to France to pressurise the Algerian government are various but for some reason or another the French government seems reluctant to undertake them. It could limit the number (currently between 200,000 and 300,000) of visas accorded to Algerian nationals each year. In order for this to be really effective, it would need to affect Algerian dignitaries and their families. This could be done by reversing a measure taken in 2007 which allowed diplomatic passport holders to come to France without visas. Algeria gave such passports to all sorts of big-wigs. If these people were no longer able to shop in French luxury establishments or get treated in top French hospitals, that would cause the regime some problems.
Another way of putting pressure on Algeria would be to limit family reunions. The accord signed in 1968 allows Algerians to ask for family reunions after only 12 months while other foreigners have to wait 18 months. This would help cut the disproportionate effect Algerian immigration has on the overall figures.
Not only does France finance medical projects in Algeria through European programmes, but also many Algerians prefer to come to France for their medical treatment. According to an agreement made in 2019, Algerians can receive medical treatment in France without prepayment. The Algerian government is obliged to to pay for this treatment. In reality, it doesn’t and the Algerian government owes the hospitals in Paris alone €45 million! No other non-European nations are accorded this privilege. Although many French voters find these privileges scandalous in the light of Algeria’s hostility to France, it is highly unlikely that any of these measures to revoke them will be taken.
Like Bouteflika before him, Tebboune uses hostile propaganda which depicts the former colonial power as the enemy to deflect attention from his government’s inefficiency and corruption. This is not working completely in Algeria- another protest movement has sprung up on social media under the title “Manich Radi”: I am not satisfied. A counter movement has replied : I am with my country. This seeks to discredit the “unsatisfied” by accusing them of wanting to destabilise the country and being in the pay of foreign powers. Since the beginning of the dissent in December 2024, there have been arrests followed by imprisonment under the same charges that were levelled at Boualem Sansal.
The opposition between those who hate the regime and those who support it spills over into France. The Algerian government continually seeks to weaponise the Algerian diaspora in France for its own ends. The size of this diaspora is not negligible. There are estimated to be between 6 and 7 million people of Algerian origin, whose remittances to their families in Algeria are instrumental in helping to minimise social problems in Algeria. This sizeable community is by no means united in its attitudes to the “bled” (back home) and is subject to a barrage of pressure of which the majority of French people is unaware.
Each Algerian resident of France -legal or illegal- is expected by the regime to live as if s/he had never left Algeria. Those with dual nationality are not considered to be French but Algerian. Assimilation is stigmatised and condemned as a betrayal. The Algerian government has always striven to control the diaspora. Back in the 1950’s the FLN (the main nationalist movement during the war for independence) kept its eye on Algerian workers in France, intimidating them and forcing them to work for independence. In this period, 4,000 Algerians were killed in France by other Algerians.
Today anti-French Algerians in France choose Tik Tok as their favourite weapon. These “influencers”, often themselves here illegally, set themselves up as policemen of the diaspora. They are everywhere- Brest, Lyon, Montpellier. Usually poorly educated but with a lot to say, in the past they would have confined themselves to the local bar or café to spout their opinions. Today all they need is a smartphone in order to address themselves to a far wider audience. Relying heavily on Islam and nationalism they rabble rouse against those of Algerian origin who have chosen to assimilate.
A more sophisticated method of applying pressure is AL24 News. This television channel, launched in 2022, puts out propaganda against France in perfect French, scolding the enemies of Algeria who are “conspiring” against the motherland from France or from the “bad neighbour” -Morocco. The commentators spy out Zionism on every street corner. Boualem Sansal and Kamel Daoud (winner of last year’s Prix Goncourt) are painted as “thought Harkis” and “agents for the destabilisation of Algeria paid for by those nostalgic for French colonial Algeria”. The allegiance of those who have dual nationality is most eagerly courted because they can vote and stand for election here.
A recent article in Marianne magazine reveals how Algeria, not content with television and social media, is engaging in more sinister actions. Two government employees in France are suspected by the DGSI (equivalent of MI5 in the U.K.) of having passed on to Algeria sensitive information about opponents of the regime who are living in exile in France. With possibly serious consequences. Hichem Aboud, a former officer in the Algerian army, who has been living in exile in France since 1997 and who published a book called “The Mafia of the Generals” in 2002 was subjected to an attempted kidnapping in Barcelona last year. So far the investigation has not demonstrated the complicity of the Algerian secret services but it is not the first time that this thorn in the side of the regime has been targeted. Nor is he the only one. Algerian refugees from the regime living in France are regularly targeted by “influencers” who post their details on social media and issue death threats forcing their victims to live ultra cautiously-never receiving guests at home or going out on foot. Some, such as Kamel Boncheikh, a French Algerian writer and fierce critic of Islamism and its creeping influence in the West, have suffered from isolation. He says that people he knows refuse to meet him when they come to France for fear that the regime will learn of it and take reprisals against them when they return to Algeria.
Meanwhile Boualem Sansal continues to rot in jail with no immediate prospect of release and his fellow author Kamel Daoud, who won the Prix Goncourt in 2004 for his novel “Houris” has been the subject of two international arrest warrants issued by Algeria. Daoud and his wife, who is a psychiatrist, are accused of using the story of a young woman who escaped the “black decade” of the 1990’s without her consent. His book describes the horrors of the civil war but talking and writing about this is forbidden in Algeria. Daoud denies that the book recounts the life of Mme Arbane, the woman concerned, and says that the arrest warrants are an attempt on the part of the Algerian government to silence him as they are trying to silence Sansal.
In May 2025 28 La France Insoumise deputies voted, to their eternal shame, against a resolution demanding the liberation of Boualem Sansal. Bastien Lachaud denounced Sansal as an individual who is “close to the Islamophobic right”. Perhaps because he was invited to a book fair in Israel?
