Is The French Harkis' File Targeting Algeria?

It seems that the Algerian-French relationships reached a level of “immunity” during the last four years, as it has become easy to suffer from emergency incidents, which often occur because of the developments in Algeria or in Paris.

At a time when French President, Francois Hollande, launched supportive statements and courting Harkis, knowing the sensitivity of this file in the bilateral relationships, his wife (his girlfriend) the former Environment, Energy and The Sea Minister, Ségolène Royal, is visiting Algeria, here on Tuesday.

Royal is visiting Algeria as a Chairperson of COP 21, On the occasion of the 15th International Energy Forum, according to a statement that was issued by the French embassy in Algiers, which also confirmed that the visit of Royal, comes to confirm the French-Algerian convergence, which is realized through the meetings of the High Joint Committee, which recent meetings were held in last April in Algeria and France.

French official’s program will be busy during this visit, as she will be received by her counterpart, Minister of Energy, Noureddine Bouterfa, the Prime Minister, Abdelmalek Sellal, and she will also chair a workshop titled “Renewable Energies and Energetic Efficiency: Prospects and Challenges of the Post COP 21”, and this will be on the sidelines of the Energy Forum at the Conference Palace Abdellatif Rahal in Algiers Club des Pins.

This visit also comes in the wake of the visit, which led the Chairman of the Council of the Nation Abdelkader Bensalah to Paris last week, during which he “pricked” strongly the French party, against the backdrop of the criticism of the French investments in Algeria about the profitability activities.

French President’s statements on the Harkis raised controversy among the revolutionary family, and it rushed to criticize Hollande, using this paper for electoral considerations, as criticism in the North West of the Mediterranean Sea, such as those issued by the president of the French Communist Party, Pierre Laurent, who did not miss the opportunity to criticize the Elysée’s first man, rejecting what he called “selective honor” and called for a reconsideration of the French government’s way to deal with the remnants of the Algerian revolution, or what is called by French literature as the “Algerian war”.

Prior to that, right wing and the extreme right fabricated a case that is attributed to the Ambassador of France to Algeria Bernard Emié , (denied by Ambassador), that the number of Algerian community reaches nearly seven million people, but the matter was dropped because it is based on a poll that confines the Muslim community, including Algerians, in about three millions only and the right-wing circles considered this study as an attempt to reduce the weight of the Algerian community, and its role in the forthcoming elections, particularly the Presidential Election of the spring 2017.

It is known that the Algerian-French relationships used to record such interactions, but they rarely affect the diplomatic relationships, as the visits between the ministers did not stop even in the darkest periods, like the period after the visit of the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls last spring, and its repercussions, while the economic relationship maintained its stability even in the worst periods, when the former French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, was the Elysée Palace master.