Physical Address
Indirizzo: Via Mario Greco 60, Buttigliera Alta, 10090, Torino, Italy
Algeria is celebrating these days the 62nd anniversary of its independence. A sovereignty regained after 132 years of bloody colonization, crimes and torture, expropriation, deportation, exile, plunder and theft.
A freedom won at the cost of armed struggles, political battles and sacrifices, the most resounding of which was the revolution of November 1, 1954 and its hundreds of thousands of martyrs.
Sixty-two years later, relations between Algeria and the former colonial power are still marked by this violent history.
Between fluctuating and tumultuous, these reports are still stigmatized by this past that still returns. And the question of memory is one of the most sensitive issues that poison these reports, despite recent efforts on both sides.
A few months ago, through the voice of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Attaf, Algeria mentioned five issues that are blocked or need to be resolved first. He cited the question of “mobility”, “economic cooperation”, “nuclear tests”, “Western Sahara” and “memory”.
Of all these issues, the last one is certainly the most complex, the most delicate and the most sensitive. For some, it is the key to any development in bilateral relations.
One of the issues raised by the Algerians is this non-recognition by France of its colonial past since its invasion in June 1830. Because the crimes committed even before the war of independence are even more horrible, more barbaric and more numerous.
This recognition must be global and must include the entire colonial history from the beginning to the nuclear tests carried out years after independence in the Algerian Sahara.
How can we have “normal” relations when Paris systematically refuses, to the point of denial, the revelation of the truths of its actions? Can we understand logics such as France’s refusal to return the property of the Algerian people and its leaders, which are part of the national heritage and its symbols, such as the sword, the burnous of Emir Abdelkader or the cannon of Sidi Merzoug.
How can we explain that the Elysée refuses to include in the agenda of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s next visit to France, scheduled for October, a trip to the Château d’Amboise where Emir Abdelkader was imprisoned?
These sticking points are added to other equally complicated ones, such as the French nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara and their disastrous consequences on the populations and the environment. The Algerian victims and their families are demanding from France first recognition and then compensation, as it did for the Polynesian populations in the Pacific.
In six years, France has carried out 17 nuclear tests on the sites of Reggane (wilaya of Adrar), then In Ekker (Tamanrasset).
Documents declassified in 2013 in France revealed significant radioactive fallout extending from West Africa to southern Europe.
On this issue, Algiers had proposed the creation of a $100 million investment fund, the role of which is to tackle the radioactive effects on flora and fauna and to compensate the affected civilian populations.
The other dispute that still remains unresolved is the nagging question of archives. The task is immense for historians, but the approach that was intended to be methodological, historical and academic has become bogged down in political considerations.
However, the commission created for this purpose has come a long way, advancing on important chapters such as the digitization and restitution of archival documents, the development of an exhaustive and open list of symbolic assets such as those that belonged to Emir Abdelkader and Ahmed Bey with a view to their restitution, exchanges and training of doctoral students and researchers, the development of a chronology from 1830 to 1962, the continuation of the identification and census of cemeteries, tombs and names of Algerian prisoners from the 19th century who died and were buried in France, the digitization of civil status and cemeteries from the colonial period preserved in Algeria, the establishment of a digital portal in the form of a “shared library”.
However, these advances still come up against not only the blockages of the French administration, which uses the law and legislation as a pretext, but also the opposition and mistrust of the currents of the French extreme right, supported by those nostalgic for “French Algeria”, the remnants of the OAS, the harkis and their descendants.