60 years after the independence of Algeria, France must change its position if it wants to turn the page, according to the former French ambassador to Algiers, who has just released a book
France must have a much “less timorous” position vis-à-vis Algeria if it wants to turn the page, 60 years after the independence of this country, and build a “balanced” relationship, believes Xavier Driencourt, ex-French Ambassador in Algiers.
“The Algerians only understand the balance of power. We also need to have a clearer discourse”, he said in an interview on the occasion of the release of his book “The Algerian Enigma”, drawn from eight years of experience in Algiers.
Xavier Driencourt was twice the French ambassador to Algeria, from 2008 to 2012 then from July 2017 to July 2020, notably during the popular protest movement of Hirak which ended 20 years of the reign of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019.
After 130 years of colonization, including eight of a bloody war of independence, and six decades of more or less happy post-colonial relations, crises and tensions have multiplied since 2019, to the rhythm of reminders or summons of ambassadors by the authorities. Algerian.
“Basically, the Algerians have chosen China. We, they take us by boat. There is only one thing that interests them in the relationship with France, and that is visas”, asserts Xavier Driencourt.
According to him, France is “paralyzed” vis-à-vis Algiers for fear of “angry”, undergoing “retaliatory measures”, losing the attention of a key factor for security in the Sahel and the fight against illegal immigration.
“We need to have a less timorous, much stronger position,” says the diplomat. “We have too often turned the other cheek after receiving a slap,” he also wrote.
“No interference, no indifference”
According to him, French politicians “do not have a lucid and healthy vision of the bilateral relationship because Algeria is as much about diplomacy as it is about domestic politics”.
They must constantly compose between contradictory interests, those of the returnees who partly crystallize in a far-right vote and those of the French from Algerian immigration who always have their eyes turned towards Algiers.
“As a result, we are led to have always minimalist management. During the Hirak crisis, we came up with this miraculous formula “neither interference nor indifference” because that was what bothered us the least. It is difficult in this context to have a balanced relationship, ”says Xavier Driencourt.
On the side of Algiers, the anti-French discourse remains lively, carried by a complex balance of political forces in which the army plays a dominating role.
“These people don’t actually get together around a table with an agenda and a record of decisions. It is something elusive, opaque, including for the Algerians themselves”, summarizes Xavier Driencourt.
This is what President Emmanuel Macron has called a “politico-military system”, accusing him of relying on the “memorial rent” of the war. Words that caused a new outbreak of fever with Algiers in the fall of 2021.
“No echo” in Algiers
As soon as he was elected in 2017, Emmanuel Macron initiated a revival of the Franco-Algerian relationship. He made a series of memorial gestures on the war in Algeria. But these found “no echo” in Algiers, which continues to wait for an official apology, recalls the diplomat.
The French president has proposed the creation of a School 42 in Algiers, on the model of the one founded in Paris by the businessman Xavier Niel, to train young people there in computer coding. The Tour de France 2022 should also have started from Algiers, a strong symbol on this 60th anniversary of the end of the war, says Xavier Driencourt.
So many projects remained a dead letter. “Our interlocutors told us ‘it’s good’ and then it stopped and we never had any explanations (…) There is a deus ex machina behind who said ‘no'”, lose the ex-ambassador.
The generation of war, embodied by the chief of staff of the army, General Said Chengriha, 76, will soon give way to a new elite. “She will be replaced by a generation that was trained in the Brezhnev USSR and is also more Arabic-speaking. They will not necessarily be more favorable to us, ”notes Xavier Driencourt.
“And the generation still after was formed at the time of the Algerian civil war (the 90s), it is more oriented towards the Gulf countries, Egypt”, he points out.
