Algeria-France: Macron reserves exceptional welcome for Tebboune

A delegation led by Anne-Marie Descotes, Secretary General of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, went to Algiers on Sunday 16 April to finalise the programme for the next visit of the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, to Paris. The visit is likely to take place between 2 and 5 May. This was announced by the French daily L'Opinion, which is very close to the El-Mouradia Palace. 

The programme drawn up by the Elysée is unique. Macron wants to mark the occasion by reserving a welcome to which a privileged few, whom France counts among its closest friends, are entitled. Until now, however, relations between the two countries have always been marked by periods of frostiness and tension since Algeria's independence in 1962. In the short period of Tebboune's reign alone, just three years, Algeria has withdrawn its ambassador twice. The first time was in October 2021, when the French president said publicly everything his predecessors had said and everything the French political class thought. He described the Algerian regime as a "politico-military regime that maintains a memory rent", adding that the "hirak had shaken and weakened it". This happened on 30 September 2021, before a group of young French-Algerian students. 

The anger over, the Algerian ambassador in Paris returned to his post, two months later, as if nothing had happened. Macron had not apologised. In February 2023, for the second time under Tebboune, "Algiers recalled its ambassador for consultations", according to the established formula. The French consul in Tunis helped the Algerian opponent Amira Bouraoui, who was carrying a French passport, to leave Tunisian territory on a flight from Tunis to Lyon. 

Like a spoilt child, the Algerian regime was angry and considered this gesture as interference in Tunisian affairs, as the Tunisian authorities reproached the French-Algerian activist for having illegally entered Tunisia from Algerian territory. Her passport had not been stamped at the border post. Algiers had urgently sent the head of its external security services, Major General Djebbar Mehenna, to retrieve the 'fugitive'. He returned empty-handed and Tebboune was angry. 

It is hard to imagine a head of state attaching so much importance to such a trivial matter as to call in his ambassador. 

Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, Tebboune does not flinch when it comes to matters of principle where France does not hesitate and puts him in his place.  

There was not the slightest Algerian reaction when Emmanuel Macron declared unequivocally that "France will not apologise" for colonial crimes. A statement that went unnoticed in Algiers even though it was made to an Algerian journalist, Kamel Daoud, and published in one of France's leading weeklies, Le Point. In the same interview, he announced that France would not hand over opponents classified by Algiers as terrorists and sentenced to harsh prison terms ranging from 20 years to life imprisonment. Here too, Algiers remains silent. Even the press, described by the Algerian public as being under the influence of the state, refrains from commenting.

Just this Sunday, 16 April, when the French delegation was fine-tuning the programme of Tebboune's visit to Paris with the Algerians, the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia, classified as a terrorist movement by Algiers, led by its leader Ferhat Mehenni, sentenced to life imprisonment for terrorism by a court in Algiers, marched in Paris from the Place de la Bastille to Nation with great pomp to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of the Berber Spring. No protest from Algiers. 

Macron knows very well how to handle the carrot and stick with Tebboune. He also knows how to turn a blind eye to the childishness of the Algiers authorities when the French language is questioned in education or everyday life. He knows very well that these impulses are episodic and are not part of a well thought-out policy. They are untimely reactions to certain situations, as if to remind France that its former colony deserves better treatment. This is what the reception protocol prepared for Tebboune's visit was all about. 

Macron received him at the airport with great fanfare, before the official reception at the Invalides and the walk along the Champs Elysées. A speech at the Palais Bourbon before French parliamentarians and a visit to the Château d'Amboise to pay tribute to Emir Abdelkader, proclaimed since 1965 as a symbol of resistance to colonial occupation and later a great friend of France. This gave Tebboune the impression of being a major player in the big league. 

It should be noted that Tebboune is the third Algerian president to pay an official visit to France. The first to take the step was the late Chadli Benjedid. From 7 to 10 November 1983, he made the first official visit to Paris since the independence of an Algerian head of state.  

On the economic front, it was crowned by an order for 5,800 Renault trucks and two Airbus. The order was decided by President Chadli Bendjedid. France was once again Algeria's leading customer and supplier: the amount of trade rose from 25 billion francs in 1981 to 45 billion francs in 1983. We had just broken with the era of Houari Boumediene, who was very resentful of the former colonial power. This resentment was poorly disguised in the speech made during the official dinner in honour of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who paid the first visit by a French head of state to independent Algeria in April 1975. In his speech, President Houari Boumediene thundered: "we turn the page of history, but we do not break it". This resentment was expressed on several occasions when the Algerian president showed his guest the achievements of independent Algeria over the past 13 years. The ultra-modern university of Constantine designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the petrochemical complexes of Arzew and Skikda, the steel complex of El-hadjar and so many other facilities that do Algeria proud. 

Giscard's visit to Algeria ended with a face-to-face meeting shrouded in mystery that the two men never revealed. The special correspondent of the Quotidien de Paris had described Giscard in a state in which he had never been known. He wrote: "Giscard left the room (of the interview) with a pale, livid face and trembling legs (...) what had been said between the two men? The answer to this question was never given". This comment was reproduced by the same newspaper during François Mitterrand's visit to Algiers in 1981 (30 November to 1 December).  

Another Algerian president who has never visited France is Liamine Zeroual, who went so far as to cancel a meeting with President Chirac on 22 October 1995 in New York on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the creation of the UN. However, a few days earlier (10 October), the French head of state had announced that he would meet with his Algerian counterpart. This cancellation by the Algerian side was described by the (French) Socialist Party as a slap in Chirac's face. 

As for the first president of independent Algeria, Ahmed Benbella (1962-1965), he met General de Gaule at Le Bourget airport in 1964, where the Algerian head of state's plane was stopping over. In an interview he gave to the editor of the Nouvel Observateur, René Beckmann, in 1982, he declared that he spontaneously stood at attention when he recalled the images of his decoration by the General at Montecassino when he was a non-commissioned officer in the French army during the Second World War. 

Before Tebboune, Abdelaziz Bouteflika was the second Algerian head of state to make an official visit to France. The author of violent tirades against French diplomacy for his disgraceful comments on his election to the presidency of the republic, Bouteflika passed in the eyes of Hubert Védrine, the head of this much maligned diplomacy, as a president capable of being as shady as he was lukewarm. Others found him charming and seductive during his visit to Paris in June 2000. It was his first official visit abroad.  Speech at the National Assembly - a first for an Algerian president - dinner at the Elysée, meeting with businessmen, visit to the Verdun Memorial to pay tribute to Algerian soldiers who fell during the First World War. But no descent of the Champs-Elysées, as planned for Tebboune. Moreover, a descent that risks being cancelled for fear of seeing thousands of Algerians booing him.

Yes, many Algerians are mobilising to give Tebboune a special welcome. They want to remind him of his human rights violations and the critical situation he has plunged the country into. A recently created Algerian human rights organisation, the Association for Freedom, Democracy and the Defence of Human Rights in Algeria, is preparing to write to President Macron to remind him that his guest cannot be welcome in the country that is the cradle of human rights. In addition to the daily violations of human rights, he counts in his entourage generals who have murdered hundreds of Algerians in cold blood and who now occupy positions of responsibility at the highest levels of the state.  

Army General Saïd Chengriha, who in 1993 shot in the head a peaceful citizen of the town of Lakhdaria, 60 km east of Algiers, will be quoted, as recounted by former Algerian army officer Habib Souaïdia in his book "La sale Guerre", published in 2001 by "La découverte".  

General Djebbar Mehenna, the current head of Algerian foreign security, will also be summoned. According to several testimonies, he was the instigator of the assassination of the seven Tibhirine monks kidnapped during the night of 26-27 March 1996 and held captive for several weeks. Their disembodied heads were found on 30 May 1996 a few kilometres from the town of Médéa, capital of the Titteri.

Among the other generals who collaborated with Tebboune, the names of Generals Abdelkader Haddad alias Nacer El-Djen and Hamid Oubelaïd alias Hocine Boulahia, who coldly executed dozens of poor innocents, according to the testimony of one of their former colleagues, broadcast on YouTube, will figure prominently in the correspondence of this association.

The judicial part of Tebboune's visit to Paris will certainly not be pleasant for either the Algerian delegation or the French, who have chosen their side in Algeria by supporting a regime that is unpopular, repressive and a champion of human rights violations. There are more than 400 political prisoners languishing in the prisons of the military-political regime. "Macron will have everything to lose if he sides with a Tebboune puppet of the bloodthirsty military," commented an informed observer of the Algerian political scene.