The fault of France! It is in essence the response of the Algerian government to the letter of Emmanuel Macron, who the day before enjoined the French government to show “more firmness and determination”. The long press release published Thursday by the state agency Algeria Press Service claims that “France, as soon as this crisis is on its own, has laid its management in terms of power relations. This “crisis” never explained is the rapprochement of France with Morocco sealed a year ago by the recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, the red line of Algeria.
The bet lost with Tebboune
The press release announces a retaliatory measure: the “pure and simple denunciation” of the Franco-Algerian agreement on official and diplomatic passports, exempt from short stay visa. Concluded by Nicolas Sarkozy, reinforced by François Hollande, this agreement is regularly denounced in Paris for its abusive use by Algerian dignitaries and their families. In his Wednesday letter, Emmanuel Macron just asked for the “official suspension”, after a de facto suspension.
The rise in tension between the two countries had not waited for the subject of Western Sahara. Since his election in 2017, Emmanuel Macron has tried in vain to build more peaceful relations between France and his former colony, betting in particular on his personal relationship with his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune. This is now more than abstained, like the diplomatic relations of their countries: the French ambassador was recalled in mid-April, after Algiers’ dismissal of twelve French agents.
Sansal and Gleize condemned
This tension was fed by the arrest in November of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, recently sentenced to five years in prison for having supported the Moroccan thesis on the Sahara. And since the sentence was made public to the seven years in prison by journalist Christophe Gleizes. Tension finally fueled by French domestic policy, and the will of the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau to impose an showdown with Algeria on immigration. The turning point taken Wednesday by Emmanuel Macron, who previously favored the diplomatic way with his Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot, therefore appears to be an alignment on the interior.
Algerian governments, for their part, worn and abused anti-French feeling. This is still evidenced by this Wednesday the daily life of the power El Moudjahid which title “from goebbels to cyberactivists, the factory of the anti -Algerian narrative” – mixing in its diatribe Bruno Retailleau, Israel and Morocco.
In conclusion of his letter, Emmanuel Macron stresses that a “large part” of the French “maintains […] A link “with Algeria, a link” which cannot be weakened by these disputes “. The intensity achieved by the crisis makes it strongly doubted.