France and Algeria inch closer, 50 years on

Fifty years after Algeria won independence, France’s new President Francois Hollande finally appears ready to express regret over one of the bloodiest episodes in its colonial history.
The trauma of the 1954-1962 Algerian war, in which hundreds of thousands were killed or uprooted, left deep scars in both societies, stalling a potential economic and political partnership that could help revive the Mediterranean basin.
France’s Socialist president has an affinity with Algeria, where he spent eight months working at the French embassy in 1978 and has regularly returned. Hollande’s election in May has rekindled hopes for an elusive reconciliation as Algeria celebrated 50th anniversary of its independence.
“Now that he has taken power, we are expecting action,” said Algerian Minister for War Veterans Mohamed Cherif Abbes.
Before winning the presidency, 57-year-old Hollande suggested it was time to turn the page on France’s 132-year Algerian colonial history, although he stopped short of promising the formal apology many in Algeria want to hear.
“Today, between an apology that was never made, and forgetting, which is to be condemned, there is scope for taking a frank and responsible view of our colonial past,” Hollande wrote in a column for Algerian newspaper Al-Watan in March.
The war of independence cost the lives of 1.5 million Algerians, the Algerian government says, and it has pushed for Paris to admit its part in the massacre of 45,000 Algerians who took to the streets to demand independence as Europe celebrated victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
French government officials declined to speak directly on the matter, highlighting the sensitivity of ties. But diplomats are working to crystallize Hollande’s position ahead of an expected visit to Algeria this year that would be the first by a French president since Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.
He has already promised to break with Sarkozy’s immigration and security policies, seen by many as stigmatizing France’s 5 million Muslims, who are mostly of Algerian origin.
“Now is the time. We must take initiatives and can’t let this moment pass,” said Jean-Pierre Chevenement, a former defense minister who heads the Franco-Algerian Association. “The government is ready, as is the president.”
On the anniversary, both sides agreed not to organize official events. Even an exhibition in Paris, the first in France showing the use of torture by its soldiers, caused consternation among diplomats worried about reopening old wounds.
“We don’t share the same memories, but we can share our history. If we managed it with the Germans, then it’s a piece of cake with the Algerians,” said Pascal Blanchard, an expert on colonial history at the research centre CNRS in Marseille.
While there is a desire in Paris to turn the page, Hollande can only go so far before facing serious questions at home.
Just as the Algerian community feels stigmatized, many so-called “pieds noirs” (“black feet”) — North African-born Europeans repatriated after independence — and Muslim “harkis” who fought in the French army against Algerian insurgents, oppose a formal apology.
Some say it is to them that the French government should apologize and provide compensation.
In one letter sent to this 2 million-strong community during the campaign, Hollande promised neither “amnesia nor repentance”. He had also previously said that it was useful for France to offer an official apology to the Algerian people.
“Politicians ... write any old thing to keep us happy,” said 82-year-old Gerard Perrin, a fifth-generation ‘pied noir’ who received two letters from Hollande earlier this year.
“Nobody has done anything for us. With President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in power, I don’t think any compromise is possible.”
In Algeria, the government rarely speaks officially on the issue, letting independence-era heroes act as its mouthpiece. Many of these veterans demand compensation from France, a law criminalizing colonialism and a formal apology from Paris — suggesting Hollande’s expression of regret might not be enough.
The case is complex because, unlike elsewhere in its empire, Paris treated Algeria as an administrative unit of France itself and attempted to negate the territory’s own history and culture, leaving a legacy of bitterness.
“We have to transcend the difficulties of the past to give our efforts a solid base that resists time and the turbulence of history which does not forget our main objective to develop our relations,” Bouteflika said in a special 50th anniversary edition of French daily Le Monde.
The 73-year-old made no demands for an apology, but said he wanted “new impetus” in bilateral cooperation in the spirit of a failed agreement he had drafted with former President Jacques Chirac in 2003 as a roadmap for reconciliation.
Chirac had his administration craft a Franco-Algerian friendship treaty in the same vein as one with Germany after World War II. In his memoirs, he said his efforts failed because Algeria had insisted on a full apology.
“We have no hatred toward the French people, but we have the right to ask France to recognize the crimes of colonial France and then apologize,” said Tayeb Al-Houari, secretary-general of the National Organization of Children of the Martyrs.
“There is an opportunity for the new French government to think about the right way to close the file of the colonial era and deal with Algeria as an independent state.”