French Despair Of Progress In Relations With Algeria

While information is circulating about the existence of tensions in the file of memory between Algeria and France after two meetings of the mixed committee in charge of this file, indications are emerging that Paris is trying to play the card of the Moroccan regime in the hope of obtaining concessions from the Algerian side in some of the files outstanding between the two parties.
This trend was the focus of a reading of France’s positions towards its former colonies in the Maghreb, Algeria and the Kingdom of Morocco, which have been experiencing a real estrangement for about three years. This reading was presented by one of the newspapers known for its weight and proximity to the sources of decision-making in the French capital, represented by the newspaper ” Le Monde, which the French President Emmanuel Macron usually uses as a platform to market his political and diplomatic messages to his partners abroad.
Based on this reading, the French president, “faced with the impasse that the reconciliation with Algeria has reached,” says Le Monde, “tends to rebalance his Maghreb diplomacy in favor of Rabat, especially with regard to the Western Sahara,” despite the serious diplomatic crisis that has occurred. He lived it with the Alawite regime in 2022 and 2023, after having despaired of obtaining what he wanted from Algeria.
Although the reading has a media dimension, it may not be without guidance from some party in the corridors of the French state, with the aim of pressuring Algeria to soften its sharp positions on some issues, especially those related to memory, at a time when many sources indicate that the work of the Joint Committee stumbles on some details.
He refers here to the Algerian party’s adherence to its right, guaranteed on the basis of all the laws, to restore its entire archive, undiminished, which seems to have failed in the last meeting of the mixed committee, after the French party reserved its reservations to the handover of some of the tools and belongings of Emir Abdelkader, under the pretext that the grandchildren of the prince gave them to France, while the Algerian side rejects this justification, pointing out that if it is confirmed, it was done under pressure, which makes the matter invalid.
The newspaper “Le Monde” was present, in one way or another, in a stormy crisis between Algeria and Paris, in the fall of 2021. It obtained “exclusive statements” from the French president in which he attacked the regime in Algeria and accused it of using the memory file for political purposes.
He also questioned the existence of an Algerian nation before the French colonialism in 1830; this is the incident that led the president of the republic Mr. Abdelmadjid Tebboune to summon the ambassador Mohamed Antar Daoud from Paris in protest against these statements that were described as provocative, and it is this fact that prompts observers today to read what “Le Monde” wrote in its edition published on Monday, as an indication that something is cooking behind the walls.
The article goes on to say that the trip to Rabat by the French Foreign Minister, Stephane Séjourné, last February 26, where he said he wanted to “write a new chapter” in Franco-Moroccan relations, is a “first indication” of what Paris is planning, in anticipation of Emmanuel Macron’s possible state visit to Morocco later this year, which has not yet been officially announced, despite the accumulation of disagreements between Paris and Rabat, starting with the scandal of the Moroccan secret service spying on the French president’s phone via the Zionist “Pegasus” software.