Will The Memory File Between Algeria And France Return To The Fore?

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune received the French historian, Benjamin Stora, the special advisor to the French President, Emmanuel Macron, on memory matters, a meeting that came while Stora was in Algeria to participate in the celebrations commemorating the 60th Independence and Youth Days.

A statement by the Presidency of the Republic stated that the French historian visited Algeria in order to participate in the distinguished independence celebrations this year, and that he came to Algeria with a written message from the French President, and he handed it to his Algerian counterpart, during this visit, in the first contact between the two countries. It is likely that the memory file was present for the first time, since the deterioration of bilateral relations in the wake of the “irresponsible” statements of the French president in the autumn of last year.

Stora had been commissioned by the French President to prepare a file on “the memory of French colonialism in Algeria”, as part of his project aimed at calming the “conflict of memory” between the two countries. However, Chikhi did not submit any such work.

On the other hand, Stora completed the report he was assigned and handed it to the Elysee Palace in January 2021, a work that did not appeal to the Algerian party, as he did not refer to the main demand represented in the apology for the French crimes, a demand that the Algerians have raised in the face of French state officials since the outbreak of a crime case of the colonial past, in February 2005, when the French Parliament decided to enact a law glorifying heinous colonial practices in Algeria, and led to the annulment of Algeria’s conclusion of a friendship treaty with Paris that was under preparation during the era of former French President, Jacques Chirac.

Mr. Chikhi had been asked by journalists to comment on the French report, but he avoided going into that, and justified his position by the fact that what Benjamin Stora did was a matter that did not concern Algeria as much as it concerned the French side alone, and since that date this file has been closed.

Algerian-French relations did not regain their vitality until the end of last year, after two visits to Algeria, during which the former Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was keen to play the role of a firefighter to reduce tension between the two countries.

According to diplomatic sources from the French embassy, a visit by the new French Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna, was likely in these ceremonies, but the representation seems to have been reduced to the historian Benjamin Stora, given that the issue is linked to an occasion related to memory, which the guest (Stora) had previously worked on at the request of President Macron.

The French president complains, according to those close to him, about the Algerian side’s lack of cooperation in his project to reduce tension at the level of memory. Hostage by circles hostile to Algerian interests, especially those clinging to the illusions of “French Algeria”, who have returned strongly to the fore in light of Macron’s policies, which are closer to some positions of the extreme right regarding this sensitive file.

Any Algerian cooperation in the memory file remains subject to serious messages from the French side, and these messages remain absent to this day, because the steps taken by Macron so far (apologies to the families of Maurice Auden and Ali Boumenjel), remain symbolic and far from the aspirations of the Algerians.