Foreign Relations of France - Algeria

Algeria

Relations between post-colonial Algeria and France have remained close throughout the years, although sometimes difficult. In 1962, the Evian Accords peace treaty laid the foundations of a new Franco-Algerian relationship. In exchange for a generous coopération regime (massive financial, technical and cultural aid), France secured a number of economic and military privileges. Economically, France enjoyed a preferential treatment vis-à-vis the Saharan wealth of hydrocarbons. Militarily, it could keep the Mers-el-Kébir base for 15 years and use the Saharan nuclear test-sites for another five years. France had used these sites to carry out its first nuclear tests (Gerboise bleue) in 1960. 90% or more of the Europeans established in Algeria (pieds-noirs) left the country in a massive exodus creating a difficult void in the bureaucratic, economic and educational structure of Algeria. On the other hand, the issue of the harkis, the Arabs who had fought on the French side during the war, was still to be solved at the turn of the 21st century, being somehow ignored by the French while seen as outright traitors by the Algerian people. On the economical level, Algeria remained for some time the fourth largest importer of French goods, conducting all its transactions with France in the Franc zone. Many Algerians were encouraged by French authorities and businessmen to migrate to France in order to provide workforce during the Trente Glorieuses (Thirty Glorious) growth. Relations between France and Algeria have remained closely intertwined, and France could not entirely escape from the chaos which threatened Algeria during the civil war in the nineties.

Ahmed Ben Bella, the first President of Algeria was reported in a 2001 interview as saying that "The Algerian people have lived with blood. We brought de Gaulle to his knees. We struggled against French rule for 15 years under the leadership of Emir Abdel-Kader Al-Jazairi. The Algerian population was then four million. French repression cost us two million lives. It was genocide. We survived as a people. Barbaric French atrocities did not subdue our fighting spirit."

On 23 February 2005, the French law on colonialism was an act passed by the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) conservative majority, which imposed on high-school (lycée) teachers to teach the "positive values" of colonialism to their students (article 4). The law created a public uproar and opposition from the whole of the left-wing, and was finally repealed by president Jacques Chirac (UMP) at the beginning of 2006, after accusations of historical revisionism from various teachers and historians.

Algerians feared that the French law on colonialism would hinder the task the French confronting the dark side of their colonial rule in Algeria because article 4 of the law decreed among other things that "School programmes are to recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa, ..." Benjamin Stora a leading specialist on French Algerian history and an opponent of the French law on colonialism, said "France has never taken on its colonial history. It is a big difference with the Anglo-Saxon countries, where post-colonial studies are now in all the universities. We are phenomenally behind the times." In his opinion, although the historical facts were known to academics, they were not well known by the French public and this led to a lack of honesty in France over French colonial treatment of the Algerian people.

During the period that the French law on colonialism was in force, several Algerians and others raised issues and made comments to emphasise that there were many aspects of French colonial rule that were not widely known in France. A senior Algerian official Mohamed El Korso said that " repentance is seen by the Algerian people as a sine qua non before any Franco-Algerian friendship treaty can be concluded." and with reference to the Setif massacre that "French and international public opinion must know that France committed a real act of genocide in May 1945" The Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika said Algeria had "never ceased waiting for an admission from France of all the acts committed during the colonial period and the war of liberation." and drew comparisons between the burning of the bodies of the victims of the with Setif massacre with the crematoria in the Nazi death camps. More recently on 17 April 2006, Bouteflika emphasised Algera's point of view when said in a speech in Paris that "Colonization brought the genocide of our identity, of our history, of our language, of our traditions".

French authorities responded to the claims by President Bouteflika and others by playing down the comments, urging "mutual respect" French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told Algeria in an official visit to make a common effort to search history "in order to establish a common future and overcome the sad pages". In an interview with El Vatan, an Algerian newspaper, Barnier said that "Historians from two sides must be encouraged to work together. They must work on the common past". French authorities asked president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to study with France the disarmed 150,000 Harkis killed without another reason that revenge, by his party, the National Liberation Front (FLN).

French President Jacques Chirac, upon harsh reactions to the law encouraging the good sides of the French colonial history, made the statement, "Writing history is the job of the historians, not of the laws." According to Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, "speaking about the past or writing history is not the job of the parliament."

The issue of the French human rights record in Algeria is also politically sensitive in Turkey. France recognized Armenian genocide by the Turks in 1998. In response to the action of the French parliament, making it an offense to deny the existence of such a genocide, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey drafted a bill in October 2006 to make it illegal to deny that the French committed genocide in Algeria. Turkish party leaders, including CHP, MHP, BBP and ANAP called on France to recognize what they called "Algerian genocide". However, the draft never became an official law.