Independence fails to heal the deep wounds

Manama: The banner on the front page of the Algerian daily Al Moujahid, which is published in French, highlights the feelings of Algerians on the signing of the accord leading to the independence of their country from France. The banner read "50 years ago, the Evian accords: The victory of a people".

However, Algerians will not celebrate the anniversary of the accords that put an end to 132 years of French colonialism and instead will wait until July to commemorate, with great fanfare, the anniversary of their independence.

Algerians insist that the wounds that afflicted them were so deep that they never healed, even after 50 years, and "especially when they are worsened by election campaign statements."

"The French claimed that they were civilised and that they came to Algeria to spread civilisation. However, they were behind most of the violence during the war," Ould Kablia, the Algerian interior minister, said on Saturday. "What the Algerian fighters did was a legitimate reaction. They never perpetrated crimes as mentioned by the French president," he said.

Atrocities

Kablia, one of the Algerian fighters in the 1954-1962 war, was reacting to statements by President Nicolas Sarkozy last week that abuses and atrocities were committed by both sides of the conflict in the Algerian armed conflict. "These abuses and atrocities must be condemned, but France cannot repent of having conducted this war," Sarkozy told French daily Nice Matin ahead of an campaign visit to the French Riviera.

"The war in Algeria was a fratricidal war, a civil war. On each side, there were crimes. On each side, there were violations," he said as he campaigned to win over the harkis, Muslims enrolled as French reserves during the war in the country and "pieds-noirs", the French living in Algeria at the time.

For Sarkozy, history cannot be denied. "France was a colonial power. This is a historic fact. The repatriated and the harkis were victims of decolonisation. This is also a historic fact. Where is France's responsibility? Is it that it was a colonial power or that it accepted a process of decolonisation in Algeria as all colonial powers everywhere were forced to do? France cannot be guilty of everything. France lays claim to its history, that's all".

Dimension

The usually emotional war of words between the two countries this year gains a new dimension as they both go to polls.

France will elect its president on April 22 and May 6 and for many Algerians, the election campaign is marred by its radicalisation and negative statements targeting Muslims living in France. On May 10, the Algerians will elect their 462 deputies. But while both Paris and Algiers seem to have opted for avoiding reopening wounds that have not healed yet.

End of war

The French government and the government-in-exile of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) signed a treaty in Evian, France, on March 18, 1962, ending the Algerian war launched in November 1954.

Following the failure of talks at Melun, near Paris, in June 1960 the Provisional Government of Algerian Republic (PGAR) and Paris requested the good offices of Switzerland. In November 1960, Swiss Foreign Minister Max Petitpierre authorised diplomat Olivier Long to agree to one of the requests.

At the beginning of January 1961, Long contacted the French minister in charge of Algerian affairs to share Algeria's wish to make contact with Paris. Switzerland then became associated with the negotiations that would lead to the ceasefire in Algeria, formalised by the Evian accords.

Meetings between Algerians and French took place in Lucerne, Neuchatel, and in French locations close to the Swiss border such as Evian, Lugrin, and Rousses. The Swiss diplomatic service and security services — police and army — helped facilitate contacts.

Source: Historic Dictionary of Switzerland