Algeria Starts Showing Cards to Fend Off French Provocations
Transient and intersecting encrypted messages these days between Algeria and Paris predict a decrease in the temperature of warm relations on this line, which recovered nearly a year ago, and precisely since the visit that led French President Emmanuel Macron to Algeria in August 2022.
Algeria has remained silent over recent weeks, which has witnessed a focused French campaign that appears to be arranged, organized, and with roles tightly distributed between the colours of the political spectrum working in favour of the wheels of the deep state in France, targeting the 1968 agreement that regulates the movement of people between the two countries.
This campaign did not stop despite the Algerian silence. In its last chapters, it reached the implication of the former French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, during the era of the former French President also, François Hollande, and it was the most violent and extremist when he called on his country’s authorities to resort to what he described as “the iron fist” to pressurize Algeria to agree to sit at the negotiating table to review the controversial agreement from the French side only.
What is interesting about all this is the draft parliamentary regulation (checked out by Echorouk ), which was proposed by the French right, represented by the Republicans LR party, to condemn the 1968 agreement, as well as cancel the privileges that the French say that Algerians enjoy during their movement, work, residence and family gathering, based on the decree No. 69/243, issued March 18, 1969.
Based on the content of the draft regulation, the horror that stands behind those calling for the revision or abolition of the 1968 Convention is the number of Algerians residing on French soil, whom official figures rank as the largest foreign community in France, or the equivalent of 12.7% of foreigners living in the former colony. They also ranked second in terms of obtaining residency, and third in terms of obtaining entry visas to France.
This debauchery in provocation is beyond imagination, to the point of alarming some specialists in Algerian-French relations, including the Algerian academic and researcher Hasni Abidi, who directs the Center for Research and Studies on the Arab World and the Mediterranean Countries in the Swiss city of Geneva, a researcher at the European Institute, and a professor at the Global Studies Institute at the University of Geneva.
Hasni Abidi expressed this annoyance in a “tweet” in response to Manuel Valls: “Former Prime Minister Manuel #Valls invites himself into the debate on the Franco-Algerian agreement of 1968 and proposes a “showdown with #Algeria”. It is his legitimate right. Yet when he was in business with President #Hollande, he didn’t see fit to lead this debate. Besides, it is not wise to plead for a showdown between neighbours and friends. Since the agreement is bilateral, it should not be a monologue, but discussed between the two partners. The biased and threatening partisan debate is not only counterproductive, but it risks torpedoing a much-needed détente in the discussions on all subjects, including the 1968 agreement. This is why political forces on both shores want the relationship between #Paris and #Algiers to be condemned to uncertainty and failure”.
However, the Algerian response expressing the state did not take long to strike a balance and to notify the other that raising a discussion about France’s colonial past in Algeria does not serve the French, and perhaps in codifying the cases in which the passage that speaks of France in the national anthem “Kassaman” -swearing- is used as a reference to that, and there is no doubt that official France received this fleeting message, which can’t be missed by an intelligent.
