Abdelaziz Rahabi, former minister and ex-ambassador of Algeria in Madrid, discusses in this interview with TSA, the recent visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Algeria, the tensions with Morocco, the crisis with Spain…
President Macron paid a three-day visit to Algeria from August 25 to 27. How, concretely, can we make serious progress in the relationship with France?
It must be recognized that Algerian-French relations have never been normal and this specificity recommends approaching them taking into account their density but also their complexity.
This is how we can concretely measure the political will of each of the actors in their relations.
In France, only three Heads of State, Presidents Chirac, Hollande, and Macron have taken the internal risk of approaching the relationship from a distant historical perspective, with serenity and sometimes even with certain courage.
On the question of memory, the two presidents agreed to create a commission of historians responsible for working on all of their archives from the colonial period and the war of independence. Is this enough?
This question has undergone a lot of manipulations and opportunistic uses which have ended up reducing the States’ room for maneuver and thus postponing the establishment of the conditions of appeasement and the serenity necessary to be able to move forward.
“It’s the biggest manipulation since that of the fan affair”
The French extreme right and Nicolas Sarkozy (former French president 2007-2012), at the time the Minister of the Interior, invented this story of repentance, a religious notion completely foreign to the international relations of our century and which does not has never been an official or social Algerian demand.
Rather, it has allowed hateful and revenge groups in France to repeatedly put Algeria at the center of internal political debate in France, particularly during election periods.
The French political elites must demonstrate intellectual honesty and stop talking about repentance because they have succeeded in passing it off unfairly as an Algerian demand.
There is not a single reference to repentance in official Algerian discourse since Algerian independence. How to explain then that this question settles in the center of the Algerian-French relations. For me, it’s the biggest manipulation since the fan affair.
How can Algeria and France build the future together while taking into account a painful past?
Colonialism was an abominable system of domination in the judgment of history. For us Algerians, it is much more than that and as such we are the heirs of two antagonistic memories but we are not alone in the world to experience this situation.
We are aware on both sides that relations between us two countries should not live in the permanent past and that we must build a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship.
The States remain the privileged actors in any evolution in the relations and we record a new dynamic that settles in large part thanks to the will and the commitment of the presidents Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Emmanuel Macron.
The Algiers Declarations of December 2012 and August 2022 are, in my opinion, important documents because they set up the framework and instruments for consultation and dialogue between the two countries.
Algeria has a strong diaspora in France, but this renewable wealth is not well exploited. Why?
The nature of the community has changed throughout history, so it must be understood from a new angle because its most influential members are rather the products of exile caused by the various political and security crises experienced by the country.
The ties have not weakened with the country to which she is very attached, but she has become more demanding because she generally lives in democratic countries.
The Algerian thinker, Mohamed Arkoun told me “Algerian diplomats will never understand enough that the diaspora loves its country very much but loves its political system less”.
In my opinion, we should already think about how to keep those who live in the country and remove the ambiguities on the question of the hypothetical return of our community abroad because the conditions are not yet met, the ecosystem present and the quality of life do not meet their requirements.
The war in Ukraine has put Algeria back at the center of European energy issues. How can Algeria take advantage of this situation?
This is not the result of chance and it is an opportunity to pay tribute to those who, from the 1970s, had understood and anticipated the current challenges and set up in Algeria the first LNG installation in the world.
We could have been more ambitious and become direct players in the internal markets in Europe in particular, but we were not vigilant enough to exercise strict institutional control over the country’s energy policy.
Today, I think that the government is right to require the involvement of its biggest customers in the exploration and production of gas because this raises the basic problem on the question of gas and like that of oil; Should you produce the quantities needed for your own needs or those of others?
“Pedro Sanchez lacked sincerity…”
We must not organize ourselves according to the energy emergencies of others, because for almost a century the world has been marked by alternating cycles, of war, recession and growth, which do not necessarily correspond to our concerns.
The crisis with Spain, which was provoked by the government of Pedro Sanchez, is in its sixth month, and there is no sign of an arrangement between the two countries. What are the conditions for normalization between the two countries?
It is regrettable that Spain has withdrawn from its traditional position which gave it a pivotal role in the region and privileged relations with Algeria, which bears no responsibility for the failure of the process of decolonization of Western Sahara nor in the persistence of this conflict.
Pedro Sanchez lacked sincerity in his relationship with President Tebboune who instead approached his tenure with a friendly and open attitude towards Spain.
Relations between States are also built on the relationship of trust and reciprocal esteem between their leaders.
It is to be hoped that opportunities will arise to consider a gradual clarification and normalization of relations between the two countries.
Morocco has accentuated its diplomatic isolation in the Maghreb, after its dispute with Tunisia over the presence of Sahrawi President Brahim Ghali at the Africa-Japan Forum. Has Tunisia ended its neutrality on the Western Sahara issue?
Tunisia’s position of neutrality on the Sahrawi question is not new, it dates from Bourguiba and no one has questioned it on a long-standing sovereign position.
I think that it is a bad trial that is being made against Tunisia, which has relied on international practice in this area by complying with the statutes of the African Union, just as Côte d’Ivoire had done on the same issue. Ivoire in 2017, Japan in 2019 and the European Union in 2022.
Since its accession in 2017, Morocco has attended the activities of the African Union alongside the Sahrawis both at the ministerial level and that of Heads of State.
King Mohamed VI had attended Africa – Europe summit in 2017 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in November 2017. Just recently in February 2022, this country attended alongside the Sahrawis at the Africa – Europe summit in Brussels.
As for the Tunis meeting, it is also not up to Japan, which no one asked to recognize the Polisario, to discuss the status of a full member of the African Union.
It is also worth remembering that Japan received President Brahim Ghali at the Ticad 7 summit in Yokohama in August 2019 in the presence of Morocco.
Everything, therefore, indicates that this country has returned to the African organization with the aim of neutralizing it by multiplying attitudes of this nature.
Moroccan preacher Ahmed Raïssouni resigned as president of the World Union of Muslim Ulemas after inciting the King of Morocco to call on Moroccans to march on Tindouf and Laayoune. Why did he say such dangerous words? Does this finally show the true nature of the Moroccan regime, expansionist and belligerent with its neighbors?
The imam and politician Raissouni was the designated representative of Morocco who presented and defended his candidacy for the presidency of the Organization of Muslim Ulemas.
As such, he was an official representative of the Kingdom of Morocco according to the norms that govern international relations.
His call for Jihad against the territorial integrity of Algeria is in fact part of the same spirit as that of the provocation of the Moroccan representative to the UN who had called, a year ago, for sedition in Algeria, which had justified Algeria’s severance of diplomatic relations with Rabat.
“Morocco has a strategy of permanent tension with Algeria”
Morocco has not to date raised the seriousness of these statements which are serious, bellicose and unacceptable and in total contradiction with the speech of King Mohamed VI calling for appeasement with Algeria.
This reinforces the feeling that Morocco feeds a strategy of permanent tension with Algeria to put it under a kind of war of attrition, to weaken it, and to lead it to get involved in the wars of influence between the big powers.
He associates Israel with it so that our region becomes a sounding board for the conflict in the Middle East and seeks to make us take sides in the tensions between the United States, Russia and China, in the Iranian nuclear issue and in the war in Ukraine.
