Macron’s Policy of Reconciling Memory is Progressing at a Lame Pace

Starting tomorrow, Wednesday, the French Senate will begin studying the draft law related to the French state’s recognition of the sacrifices of Harkis and the people who were deported from Algeria, and the recognition of compensation for the damages they sustained as a result of their negligence by the French authorities, after Algeria’s independence in 1962.

The draft law, according to the perceptions of the French presidency, falls within the framework of French President Emmanuel Macron’s keenness to address the file of “multiple memories” originating from French colonialism in Algeria, which an official at the Elysee Palace described as “very sensitive issues, requiring carefulness from persons who deal with them”.

The law, as stipulated in the first article of its draft, includes an admission by the French nation of its negligence of the rights of this group: “The nation expresses its gratitude to the Harkis, the agents of armed militias, and the employees of various auxiliary and similar formations, in the Civil Status Law under local law, from those who served France in Algeria but it abandoned them.

The same law recognizes in the aforementioned article the responsibility of the French state in not providing an adequate reception (for these groups) at the level of living conditions on French soil, following the government declarations issued on March 19, 1962, relating to Algeria (the Evian Accords), regarding persons returning from Algeria who previously enjoyed civil status and local rights and their family members, who were housed in some structures, were subjected to particularly precarious living conditions in addition to the deprivation and violations of individual liberties that were a source of exclusion, suffering and sustained trauma.

The draft law was presented, as is known by the French government, through the Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Armed Forces, who is responsible for memory and veterans, based on the directions of Macron’s speech on September 20, 2021, which included a request for amnesty in the name of the French state for the Harkis and similar groups to them, in what is called by Paris as the “Algerian War”.

This law also provides for the creation of a committee in the National Office of Veterans and War Victims, entrusted with the responsibility of defending the “Harkis” and their relatives and widows and deciding on compensation requests that should be allocated to them and re-evaluating the Harkis allowances.

While the French president is heading very quickly to close the memory file at the level of the French interior affairs, through the new law of Harkis, less than four months before the date of the presidential elections, for which he is considered one of the candidates, in the hope of winning the remnants of these influential circles supported by the French right-wing, the reconciliation of memory with the traditional rival represented in Algeria seems to be faltering until further notice. It suffices here mention the failure to compensate the victims of nuclear explosions in the south of Algeria (desert), despite the French government’s enactment of what is known as the “Morin Law” in 2010 to compensate those affected by nuclear explosions, as not a single Algerian received compensation in the name of this law, despite the severity of the damages and diseases they suffered due to the complexities included in the law to make it impossible to help these victims and grant them their rights for compensation at least.

Despite the attempt that Macron made, through the historian Benjamin Stora when he assigned him to prepare a report on the memory of French colonialism in Algeria, it stumbled in its beginning due to the lack of enthusiasm of the Algerian party because the Stora’s report was not up to the aspirations and hopes of the Algerians and it did not refer, from near or far, to one of Algeria’s main demands, which is the French state’s recognition of the crimes of colonialism and the provision of apologies and compensation, which were completely neglected, although they were modestly mentioned in some articles of the report.