Macron Misses Another Opportunity to Settle the Memory File

Once again, French President Emmanuel Macron misses another opportunity to calm the burning memory crisis between the two shores of the Mediterranean, during his commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the Evian Agreements between the Algerian interim government and its French counterpart, preferring to hold the stick from the middle.

By perpetuating this memory, the Elysee Palace was keen to create an atmosphere that would prevent it from responding to the repeated Algerian demands represented in apologizing for the crimes of the colonial past, by invoking scenes that put everyone on one level, the executioner and the victim, despite the great difference between them.

Among the invitees who were given the floor, one of the Harkis, who recalled to the attendees the abuses he had been subjected to after March 19, 1962, by elements attributed to the “National Liberation Front” like arrest and torture, a scene that compares some isolated acts and practices of some people to the ugliest crimes against millions of Algerians during 132 years of occupation.

Macron said that although Algeria did not go along with the project he started by commissioning the historian Benjamin Stora to prepare a report on the “Algerian war” to calm the wars of memory, he committed himself to continue this endeavour, and the day will come when the Algerian people will be convinced of what they have done despite it will be difficult.

The French president considered the Evian Accords “a victory for some and a defeat for others”, as he estimated that “they were neither the beginning of peace nor the end of war”, and this is an indication that the war caused harm to everyone, beginning with the Algerians who regained their independence, and the Harkis who suffered immediately after the ceasefire, and with them are the Pieds-Noirs, who left their hometown for fear of FLN’s violence, as Macron explained.

Macron said that what he has done so far in terms of calming the wars of memory, such as the French state taking responsibility for the assassination of the mathematician, Maurice Audin, the defender of the Algerians’ right to independence, and the fighter Ali Boumendjel, the lawyer of the National Liberation Front, and handing over some skulls of the Algerian resistance leaders, and putting up a statue of Emir Abdelkader and other steps… “This is what allowed what can be described as balances within French society and its deep state”.

Macron hoped that the steps he took until today would lead to progress in the coming days in the issue of memory and that Algeria will move on this path that he has drawn, despite the sensitivity, difficulties and obstacles that this road is experiencing.

The first man in the former colony tried to justify the sensitivity of the situation he is facing by asserting that he could not please everyone: “I did things which some of those present did not like (in the Elysee Palace), and I did other things which others did not like, but I did what I should have done despite the criticism that he said, “had affected him due to the Algerian party’s lack of response to his project”.

Macron was referring to Algeria’s failure to complete a report similar to the one commissioned by Benjamin Stora, noting that President Tebboune’s advisor on memory affairs, Abdelmadjid Chikhi, had considered this report as a matter involving France only.