I am still in Liberia but this week is also published my story about Algeria's independence, 50 years later, and the commemorations in the country and in France.
Here is a link:
http://thinkafricapress.com/algeria/50-colonial-past-haunts-celebrations
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Algeria
– 50 years – France
Melissa Chemam
Think Africa Press
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March 19th commemorates the 50 years
anniversary of the ‘Accords d’Evian’,
the Evian agreements, which put an end to what is rarely called in France but
is the Algerian War.
The Algerian
War, or Algerian Revolution as it is usually referred to on the Algerian side,
opposed France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, and led
to Algeria’s independence from France, officially from July 1962.
Despite the
anniversary, it is not very much discussed in France and even less taught in
French schools but it was objectively one of the important decolonisation wars.
The
war was even one of the most bloody colonial struggles ever, according to
specialists.
And as the
historian Guy Perville stated it in his essay ‘Pour une histoire de la guerre d´Algérie’,
‘For a history of the Algerian War’, it was also a civil war between
loyalist Algerians who believed in a French Algeria and insurrectionist Muslim Algerians
(chap. "Une
double guerre civile", Picard, 2002, pp.132–139). And during
its final months, the conflict also evolved into a French civil war between
pro-French hardliners in Algeria and supporters of General Charles de Gaulle
who saw from 1960 that the independence was unavoidable.
As the BBC World
Service stated in 1999, France has only started re-writing one of the most
painful periods of its history in the past 15 years, first “by recognising that
its colonial conflict in Algeria was, in fact, a war” in a bill setting the record
straight on Algeria.
Discreet commemorations, intense reflections
But
nowadays, the current French government is not really vocal about the Algeria’s
50 years of independence’s anniversary. Luckily for both parties, historians
and media are a little more. And this month of March will be a high moment of
reflection as many documentary films and books are to get out.
As the
French-German television channel ARTE has scheduled a broadcast of the famous
“Battle of Algiers” on March 12, and of a historical film realised by historian
Benjamin Stora and filmmaker Jean-Michel Meurice, it is Benjamin Stora again
who directed with filmmaker Gabriel Le Bomin the two-parts documentary “La Déchirure’’ that is currently broadcast
on the public channel France 2 on Sunday evenings, March the 11th
and 19th.
The two-hour film wants to give an
“objective and panoptic vision of the conflict”, as it has almost never been
before, explains historian Benjamin Stora. It is only based on television
archives, with no interview but a very well written voiced commentary. The
historian and his filmmaker partner have wanted to cover the whole duration of
the conflict and in an accessible way for all form of publics. Stora even
considers that the Algerian war is a pattern that can allow us to re-read our
own time, culture and international relations, between Europe and Africa.
Indeed, it “represents a matrix of our era with the end of the colonial
enterprise and the redeployment of France towards Europe instead of Africa”, he
insists, presenting the documentary in France 2’ producers. And, indeed, the
war all happened while and in spite of the change from the fourth to the fifth
Republic in France, and no one can deny the war had a huge impact in this
political collapse of French institutions during the year 1958.
The film successfully manages to take the
audience on a journey from the rise of the Aures in the autumn 1954 to the
Algerian independence in July 1962, through the key events, battles and turning
point of the conflict, thanks to a choice of lively and striking video archives
and the beautiful writing of the commentary, read by the famous French-Algerian
actor Kad Merad, whose father is Algerian and mother French. The dynamic tale of the main political and
military events quickly brings us to the high and turning point where French
General Charles de Gaulle came to power while the collapsing Fourth Republic
was troubled by the Putsch des Generaux,
the French Algerian army’s military coup attempt.
Benjamin Stora is also very much aware of
the fact that the war did not end on the historical or political consensus and
that this leaves the wounds very much open, until today, on both French and
Algerian side.
From
the historians’ notebooks to the political scene
Other events are
also commemorating the anniversary of the Algerian independence in France in
order to work on a better understanding of this painful part of the two
countries’ history, including the exhibition “La Guerre d'Algérie, images et representations” (Algerian War,
images and representations) at the Forum
des images in Paris in February or the novel “L'Art
français de la guerre” (The French Art of War) by writer Alexis Jenni.
Books have also made their way into the
French bookstores for once like the beautiful “L'Algérie en couleurs”, by Slimane Zeghidour and Tramor Quemeneur
(Editions Les Arènes), containing 350 unreleased photographs taken by
Algerian war French soldiers between 1954 and 1962, or 'Algéries 50' at Magellan
Editions, directed by Yahia Belaskri et Elisabeth Lesne and gathering
contributions from 25 writers from Algeria and France about Algeria in the past
50 years.
The national radio station France Culture is also devoting 24 hours
of programmes to the Algerian independence, partly broadcasting from Algiers
for the occasion from Friday March 16.
And the commemoration - despite the discretion on both
official sides - has started to enter the political agenda, at least in France,
where a few events are - despite the general political silence - scheduled for
the whole first semester of the year.
According to some Algerian columnists and intellectuals, the
appalling discretion on the anniversary from both countries has a few heavy
reasons: the electoral presidential campaign in France is one of the biggest,
along with the upcoming North African country's
legislative elections in May, the
impossibility for French leaders to recognise past mistakes, the general
political and economic crisis in Europe and the frozen social scene in Algeria
– which does not wish to generate more fuss than 2011 already brought in North
Africa… And then, of course, for now no common event has been scheduled.
Despite the quietness, on March 9th,
French President Sarkozy, campaigning in Nice in South-eastern France, met some
former ‘Pieds noirs’ – nicknames that
still designate the Europeans form colonial French Algeria. And he did not
hesitate to state again that according to him France did not have to apologise
for the Algerian war, condemning “atrocities and violence”, still. He had
however promised in 2007, during his presidential campaign, to recognise – at
least - the French responsibility in the abandoning of Algerian ‘harkis’, those Muslims who fought in
favour of the French rule.
It therefore definitely seems that neither Algeria nor France’s
politics are ready to talk openly about their common past, even 50 years after
the end of the war. But luckily for us, other voices are loud enough.
