Algerian Academics: Boumediene’s Foreign Policy Stemmed From the Revolution

Algeria’s foreign policy during the rule of the late President Houari Boumediene was “stemming from the political intellectual certainty” established by the National Liberation Revolution, university academics said on Wednesday in Algiers.

Mohamed Khouja, an academic at the University of Algiers 3, explained in a forum at the Palace of Culture, Moufdi Zakaria, the organizer of the event, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the death of President Mohamed Boukhrouba (Houari Boumediene), that Algeria’s diplomatic positions during Boumediene’s rule “stemmed from Algeria’s political intellectual certainty and its strategic culture established by the Algerian revolution, and then its role as a pioneer in supporting liberation movements, which enhanced respect for the Algerian state.”

He added that Boumediene’s foreign policy was “complementary to internal policy and an extension of it, and was represented in sovereign decisions, the first of which was to strengthen the internal economy and plan for qualitative development, and the second was to extend sovereignty by controlling, above all, its natural resources, and this by nationalizing hydrocarbons and mines and cutting ties with everything related to the French colonizer at that period.”

For his part, Mohamed Hamadouche, an academic at the University of Algiers 3 reviewed the “constant and variable” in President Boumediene’s foreign policy, through his sayings and positions that “translate his vision on the concept of Algerian national security”, noting “his certainty that the Arab Maghreb and the region separating Cairo and Dakar is a safe region for Algeria and that no change can occur in this region without an agreement with Algeria.”

He added that the late president Boumediene “set the principles of Algerian national security and clearly defined them, which were to control borders with neighbouring countries according to the rule of borders inherited from colonialism, support the economic independence efforts, achieve development and cooperation with developing countries, adherence to neutrality and non-interference in the internal affairs of countries, and support and assistance of liberation and decolonization movements, and resolving disputes between countries by peaceful means.”