Macron’s Strategy For Rapprochement With Algeria

French President Emmanuel Macron is betting on a de-escalation strategy with Algeria, inspired by how the Spanish government of Pedro Sanchez played it after the diplomatic crisis swept bilateral relations due to Madrid’s sudden shift in position to support the Moroccan regime’s thesis on the Western Sahara issue.

Since Algerian-French relations are experiencing a diplomatic rupture since the French President decided to support the Moroccan regime’s autonomy plan in Western Sahara, the Elysee Palace escalated the pace of playing on the memory file. The latest chapter of this manoeuvre was the inauguration of a monument in the French capital by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, at the weekend, commemorating the Laghouat massacre, in which two-thirds of the city’s population were killed by the French occupation army in 1852.

The French president aims to pressure the Algerian side, through the memory file, which is considered a very sensitive file for the Algerians, in an attempt to entice the authorities to respond to him, which is the strategy adopted by the Spanish Prime Minister despite his focus on supporting the Palestinian cause in international forums, which was manifested through the recognition of the Palestinian state, in addition to stopping support for the Moroccan plan regarding Western Sahara and only talked about the efforts of the United Nations.

The strategy of the French authorities is based on further pumping initiatives related to the memory file into unilateral decisions that no longer have the expected impact on the Algerian side, which decided to stop the work of the Algerian-French joint commission, from the Algerian side, as stated by the historian and head of the commission from the French side, Benjamin Stora, to a French public TV channel recently.

Macron knows well that he is the main cause of stopping the progress made in the previous months on the memory file when he decided to engage, in a moment of madness, in supporting the autonomy plan presented by the Moroccan regime in 2007, and therefore he is trying, through repeating his initiatives, to repair what he spoiled, but the damage inflicted on bilateral relations seems to be much more difficult than the French side, which is drowning in this predicament, believes.

According to French media reports, Macron, after despairing of succeeding in convincing the Algerian side to complete the work of the Algerian-French joint commission to study the memory file, proceeded to work based on the report submitted by historian Benjamin Stora to the French presidency in January 2021, which was supposed to be accompanied by another report prepared by the advisor to the Algerian presidency of the republic, Abdelmadjid Chikhi, in charge of the memory file, but this did not happen.

The French President’s embodied initiatives are an integral part of Benjamin Stora’s report. We can mention in this matter the annual commemoration of the suppression of Algerian protests in France on October 17, 1961, and France’s recognition of the assassination of lawyer and political activist Ali Boumendjel during the Battle of Algiers in 1957, which was acknowledged by French officer Paul Aussaresses in his memoirs.

Another embodied point that Stora emphasized in his report is related to the archives, as it was announced last May that the files of the looted Algerian archives stored in French vaults would be copied and transferred from Paris to Algeria and that researchers from both countries would be allowed to view the French and Algerian archives, in addition to establishing memory sites in French cities, and what was held in Paris last weekend is part of what Benjamin Stora’s report suggested.

In the same context, it is not unlikely that the French President will later request the transfer of the remains of the lawyer Gisèle Halimi, who supported the liberation revolution and defended Algerian prisoners in French prisons, to the cemetery of the martyrs in Alia in the Algerian capital. This is also one of Stora’s proposals, in addition to other proposals that will also find their way to an embodiment, but through a policy of distillation, in an attempt to embarrass the Algerian side through repetition and an attempt to portray it as a party that rejects rapprochement.