Algerian and French diplomatic relations are currently at their lowest point in decades.

Tensions flared last summer after French President Emmanuel Macron met his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, on the sidelines of a G7 summit in Italy. During the meeting, Macron privately informed Tebboune of France’s intent to officially endorse the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Western Sahara as “the only basis” for resolving the conflict. Algeria is a longtime supporter of the Polisario Front, a nationalist liberation movement for the independence of the Western Sahara, so this significant foreign policy move, formalized in October, triggered Algeria’s decision to recall its ambassador to France indefinitely.

In the weeks that followed, relations further soured when Algerian authorities arrested Algerian-French author Boualem Sansal at Algiers’ Houari Boumediene International Airport. Sansal was charged with “attacking national integrity” due to comments he made in an interview with a French far-right media outlet, Frontières. In the video, he controversially claimed, “When France colonized Algeria, the entire western part of Algeria was part of Morocco,” adding, “It’s easy to colonize small things that have no history.” 

Due to his antithetical views on Islamism and immigration, Sansal enjoys the support of an array of unsavory figures on the right of the French political spectrum, including many that have made their way into Macron’s new government after recent legislative elections. Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleu, is one of those politicians, and he’s spent the last two months doing his best impression of a pinwheel firecracker: emitting light, noise, and gas in all directions, but not doing anything productive. His most recent plan of action was a bizarre crackdown on Algerian influencers in France for allegedly making violent threats on TikTok. When Retailleu tried to force through the deportation of one such influencer, Algeria refused to accept his return, declaring the expulsion illegal.

This escalating feud has dominated French right-wing television panels, which are often fraught with a lack of nuance and accuracy on the matter. On this side of the Mediterranean, the discourse has been much quieter, as many have become accustomed to the peaks-and-valleys nature of the political relationship. 

Case in point: In 2021, Macron reportedly said that the Algerian nation didn’t exist before the French invasion of 1830 and that the Algerian government was living off of a “memorial annuity,” provoking a major crisis between the two governments. Less than a year later, half of his government traveled to Algiers to sign the “Algiers Declaration,” which pledged expanded cooperation between the two governments in all sectors.

I would have certainly ignored this latest episode, too, but amid the habitual cacophony, a familiar question that was posed on a television show caught my attention. It is a popular one amongst French liberal circles: “If France and Germany, once bitter enemies, have become close allies within the European Union, why can’t France and Algeria move past colonization?”

This question lingered in my mind as I reminisced on Macron’s early promises as a presidential candidate in 2017. During a visit to Algiers, Macron granted an interview from the city’s famous Librairie du Tiers monde bookstore, in which he declared, “We have to reconcile these memories, they are of the same experiences. Horrible, atrocious things… crimes against humanity were committed, so today we have to repair this, and that’s the work that I will do as president.” 

To his credit, and although it isn’t saying much at all, Macron has taken more steps toward reconciliation than any of his predecessors. But time and time again, his efforts, which the French press condescendingly qualifies as “gestures” fall woefully short of the bare minimum of what is needed to put the two countries on the same page.

Such “gestures” included returning the skulls of 24 19th-century resistance fighters that were decapitated and held in France’s Musée de l’histoire naturelle. He would also recognize the French state’s responsibility in the abduction and murder of Maurice Audin and Ali Boumendjel. Despite the fanfare in France, Macron’s acts of reconciliation have been largely met with muted reactions in Algeria.

The consensus here is that restituting trophy skulls should not be seen as a favor or gesture, it should be something French authorities strive to do to turn the page on the colonial regime’s barbaric past. As heroic as they were, Audin and Boumendjel were just two of millions of victims of French colonization, and everyone in both countries knew of the culpability of the French state decades ago.

What would it take to build the right foundations of a healthy relationship between Algeria and France? It’s a fairly simple answer. Google the elements of any effective apology and you’ll find that one must acknowledge the offence and offer to amends.

I am convinced that neither the government nor most rank-and-file Algerian citizens are expecting, nor seeking out, financial reparations for 132 years of colonization. There’s an element of pride and honor that almost completely rules that out of the equation. The basis for a renewed French-Algerian relationship is probably a simply three-pronged approach: Firstly, French leadership should come to terms with the criminal nature of its colonization of Algeria, secondly, the French army should help decontaminate nuclear and biochemical and sites they dirtied and, finally, representative objects such as the Baba Merzoug cannon should be restituted to Algeria so that they can symbolically help turn the page.

Yet, what is simple is not easy, as illustrated by more authentic efforts to reconcile memories at a grassroots level. Take the story of FLN fighter Zohra Drif, who in 1956 placed a bomb at Algiers’ iconic Mil Bark café just a stone’s throw away from the Librairie du Tiers monde. The explosion killed three and injured 60 and was immortalized by Gillo Pontecorvo in his 1966 classic, The Battle of Algiers.

Danielle Michel-Chich was five years old on that fateful day. She was at the Milk Bar with her grandmother, eating ice cream. Drif’s bomb took her grandmother and her leg. Yet, Michel-Chich would go on to surmount her physical handicap and became heavily invested in social causes as an adult. She joined student unions, feminist associations and became a reputed professor, author, and translator.

In 2012, after several unsuccessful attempts speaking to Drif directly about the Algerian revolution, Michel-Chich wrote a book entitled “Open Letter to Zohra D.” The goal of her work was an endeavor to rise above the acrimony of the Algerian revolution and see if she and Drif could find common ground on the moral query of resisting in urban environments.

“I’m not angry, I am not seeking revenge, I’m not going to jump down her throat, I managed to overcome it all. I also have political convictions that make me understand that her cause was a just one, it’s just that the ends don’t necessarily justify the means.” She explained when speaking about her book. 

Drif ignored Michel-Chich’s advances until the former was invited to a conference in Marseille. Michel-Chich attended the talk and eagerly jumped at the chance to finally speak to Drif during the Q&A session.

Drif wore a look on her face that betrayed that she knew exactly who Michel-Chich was. “I’m probably going to shock you,” she began, “but this problem should not be addressed to me. You should address it to all of the French authorities who came to enslave my country. Of course, on a human and personal level, all of the horrors, whether they be yours or ours, are tragic. I can share thousands and thousands of stories, just like yours that we experienced on our side. But we were not in a personal confrontation, we were in a war… Unfortunately, you and I were caught up in a storm that overtook the both of us.”

I always found that interaction simultaneously insightful and sad. 

Insightful because it underscored a fundamental divide in how French and Algerians perceive their shared history. While most pieds-noirs like Michel-Chich view the Algerian revolution myopically via first-person experiences of trauma, Algerian revolutionaries, and most Algerians today, view those same events as an inevitable continuous process of resistance that began with the French invasion in 1830 and which devolved into violence only when all other options were exhausted.

It was also a deflating interaction because it was an exchange between two people of good faith, who probably agreed about everything in life except the methods of resistance employed during the Battle of Algiers. And if those in good faith could not see eye-to-eye on the ethics of what happened, then what chance do we have with those who barter in bad faith and exploit painful history for political points?

Historian Benjamin Stora estimates that at least five million people living in France have a direct or indirect connection to Algeria, making this, perhaps, the most emotionally charged postcolonial relationship in modern history. In that sense, the former French ambassador, Xavier Driencourt, is correct when he mentions that relations with Algeria are particular for France because they straddle both foreign and domestic policy.

Beyond the purported political causes, this dynamic better explains the driving force behind the latest Algerian-French crisis. Until French society addresses its deeply toxic far-right elements and its leaders demonstrate greater political courage, it’s only a matter of time before the two countries reconcile, only to fall out once more.