“French colonialism has no equal” Historian Benjamin Stora on Algeria’s lasting scars

The Algerian news portal Echorouk Online has published an article in which French historian Benjamin Stora, who specialises in colonialism and memory issues, attributed the repeated political and diplomatic crises between Algeria and France to the presence of a group of French politicians who, he said, are unable to face the truth and recognise Algeria as an independent and sovereign state. According to Stora, they deliberately create crises and stir up tensions from time to time.

“Algeria is the largest country in Africa in terms of area, and it is also considered the largest exporter of gas in the dark continent, and the far right must come to its senses and recognize that Algeria is a sovereign state, this is a reality and there is no escape from it, and France is forced to deal with it from this standpoint,” Stora said.

The researcher specializing in colonial history pointed to the problems he faced in France because of his positions on colonialism, particularly regarding French colonialism in Algeria during his career, and stopped at his suffering from the targeting of one of the right-wing presidents in France, who is the former president convicted in several corruption cases, Nicolas Sarkozy, and said, “Sarkozy blacklisted me from 2006 to 2009 because of my positions,” stressing that geography imposes itself on history, as he said.

The advisor at the Élysée Palace for memory affairs commented on the status of current relations between Algeria and Paris, and stressed the need to fix them: “These relations have reached a frightening level of rupture in a unique precedent. Truths hurt but must be faced, and things must be clarified so that each party is placed before its responsibilities, and we identify the source of the defect to treat it.”

Despite his acknowledgment of the difficulty of the task, starting from the heavy burden of French colonialism of Algeria, which spanned 132 years of crimes and a war of extermination against a defenseless people, where he said “The legacy of 130 years cannot be treated by a decision or a speech or an action, because the matter is impossible. French colonialism of Algeria has no equal. However, there are human, cultural, and economic ties that mandate haste in addressing the problem.”

Unlike the French who consider Algerian immigrants a burden on France, Benjamin Stora believes that this phenomenon is one of the tragedies created by French colonialism, and it is considered a forced transfer of populations from their land, given that the situation created by the French occupation such as stripping them of their lands and giving them to a foreign people, and depriving them of their natural rights such as education and work, forced them to search for job opportunities to improve their situation.

Benjamin Stora provided a dissection of the current state of bilateral relations, holding the French responsible for what these relations have reached, and said: “What we experienced before the crisis exploded was a state of contradiction.. tangible progress on the level of memory. The Algerians advanced a lot on this level, but the other side was not responding to their aspirations.. and the situation ended as is known with the absence of the Algerian ambassador in Paris for more than two years.”

Stora concluded in the end by saying that the memory file is considered a large workshop that cannot be interrupted (continuous work) and work must be done step by step to achieve what is hoped for, considering that it is the right of the Algerians to stick to the expressed demands such as the apology and recognition of heinous French crimes, as well as those related to nuclear explosions and cleaning contaminated areas and the looted archives.

By Aghakazim Guliyev