Sixty years after independence, questions of memory remain an open wound in Algeria. A meeting of historians took place at the Élysée on Thursday.
Emmanuel Macron is “determined” to “continue the work of memory, truth and reconciliation” with Algeria on French colonization, the Élysée announced on Sunday.
During a meeting with historians held Thursday at the Élysée, the president “called for” the work already initiated by a joint Franco-Algerian commission to be successful and that the “concrete proposals formulated by the Joint Commission can be implemented. “He hopes,” said the Élysée, “that these proposals will allow our country to take a lucid look at the past and to build, in the long term, a reconciliation of memories, in the process of education and transmission for the French and Algerian youth.
A tumultuous bilateral relationship
The national narrative on the Algerian War is still omnipresent in Algerian political life. The new quarrel with Morocco over Western Sahara complicates the resolution of questions of memory, which remain painful sixty years after the independence of Algeria. Algeria. On August 20, President Tebboune, since re-elected, did not fail to refer to it during the Moudjahid (fighter) day, recalling the colonial past of a France that “believed it could stifle the people’s revolution by iron and fire.
The tumultuous bilateral relationship had already experienced a serious chill in the fall of 2021 when Emmanuel Macron described the Algerian regime as a “political-military system built on memorial rent”. During the work of the commission of historians, Algiers asked Paris for the restitution of skulls of resistance to colonization and historical and symbolic goods from 19th-century Algeria, including objects that belonged to Emir Abdelkader, the anticolonial hero (1808-1883).
