Even Vladimir Putin seemed embarrassed. Came to Moscow and Saint Petersburg from June 13 to 15 to strengthen the strategic partnership with Russia, the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, described the invader of Ukraine as a “friend of humanity”. A flattery undoubtedly intended to promote the Algerian candidacy for the BRICS, this group which brings together China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa. At the same time, relations with France continued to deteriorate. Recently, Tebboune decided to restore by decree the full version of the Algerian national anthem, which, a legacy of the war of independence, contains an anti-France passage.
Professor of the history of contemporary Arab and Berber societies at the University of Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, Pierre Vermeren is the author of a remarkable History of contemporary Algeria. From the regency of Algiers to Hirak (XIXᵉ-XXIᵉ centuries), published by New World editions. The historian explains why, in the eyes of the Algerian regime, Russia looks like “life insurance”, even though all the memorial gestures of Emmanuel Macron on the subject of colonization seem to have been useless. According to him, the growing questioning in France of the “taboo” of the 1968 agreement, which had introduced derogatory rules for the movement of Algerian nationals, will only increase tensions, because it represents a capital issue for the authoritarian regime and the Algerian elite. Interview.
L’Express: Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has just called Vladimir Putin a “friend of humanity”, even embarrassing the Russian president. Does this surprise you?
Pierre Vermeren: It is in the logic of current relations between Algeria and Russia, but also of a long history. This friendship between the two countries dates back to the war of independence, since the USSR trained engineers and officers during the Algerian war. Within the Algerian army, traditionally, there were three groups: the French-speaking soldiers, trained by the French army, those trained by Russia and the “Arabs”, trained in Syria and the Middle East. Today, the latter have disappeared, Algeria training its own military. But the friends of the Russians are, within the Algerian army, the counterpoint of the Francophiles (one could say “Westernists”), as much in terms of training or the purchase of arms as of ideological affiliation. Moreover, in terms of armaments, there is no comparison, since Russia is by far Algeria’s leading arms supplier.
This alliance between Algeria and Russia could have disappeared at the end of the Cold War. But the Russians managed to maintain it. She survived the “dark decade”, the Arab spring and the war in Syria. What the Algerians have learned is that the Russians are loyal. They kept their alliance with Bashar el-Assad, where the West dropped Gaddafi, Mubarak or the Syrian president. For them, the Russians are like life insurance. This is something that is poorly measured in France. We see Putin as an authoritarian leader, an invader. But the Algerians see it as life insurance and a protector.
How does the rivalry with Morocco, allied with the United States and Israel, also play a role?
Everything converges. Morocco, too, has retained this legacy of the Cold War. The King of Morocco has always been an ally of the United States, Westerners and Israel. This alliance has survived and even grown. In counterpoint, the Russophile tendency within the Algerian army has thus strengthened, even though relations with France have deteriorated since 2005, and Morocco has become officially close to Israel. Today, Algeria and Syria are the last two heirs of Arab military nationalism. Egypt came out of it, Iraq too. Algeria and Syria remain in a “state of war” against Israel. However, the United States – never far away – and the Gulf monarchies act as intermediaries if necessary, and Algiers gives increasing pledges to the English language.
Conversely, how can Algeria serve Russia?
It is first of all a client of its armaments industry, which is not negligible, and a “major stopover” in the Mediterranean. Then, as in the time of the Third World policy of the USSR, Russia is pursuing a real policy towards the South, which assures it of the support of many African countries, as we saw during the vote in the UN on sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine. Finally, Russia is today officially at war against the Western presence, notably French, in Africa. Algeria, too, continues to castigate French interference. The regime has also clearly allowed Wagner’s Russian arms and soldiers to pass through its territory to go to Mali or elsewhere.
Algeria and then Russia, from the hunt for Gaddafi, were both very hostile to the French and Anglo-Saxon intervention in Libya, which represented a real turning point. The 2011 war in Libya showed, in the eyes of Arab countries, that Westerners were unreliable, even though France had come out stronger from its rejection of the war in Iraq in 2003. The Russians have a very active policy on social networks in Africa, and it suits them to see Algerians constantly castigate French “neocolonialism”.
Tebboune reinstated by decree the third verse of the national anthem, written during the war of independence, which reads: “O France ! The time has come for you to be accountable. Get ready ! Here is our answer…”
It’s symbolic, and it won’t change anything in reality. But it is the response to the debate in France on the 1968 agreement establishing an exceptional regime for Algerians. When France reduced the number of visas in 2021, Algeria summoned the French ambassador, then recalled its ambassador to Paris. Then they refused to take back their nationals under an OQTF. Here is an additional challenge. Putin is described as a “friend of humanity”, while France is seen designated as the enemy. President Tebboune, or in any case the soldiers who push him within the general staff, thus confirms that the pro-Russian party in the Algerian army largely prevails over the Francophile tendency.
French colonization described as a “crime against humanity”, Stora report… Emmanuel Macron made strong symbolic gestures towards Algeria, which did not prevent relations from deteriorating. How to explain it?
Indeed, France has multiplied gestures of goodwill. But we have confused memory and geopolitics. In fact, the Algerian power uses the policy of memory. Restoring the third verse of the Algerian anthem is playing on the past. France responded to this policy of memory with a counter-policy of memory, with plaques in the streets, the restitution of the decapitated heads of Algerian resistance fighters during the conquest of the country, the recognition of the responsibility of the State in the death of Maurice Audin (which has a place in his name in the center of Algiers). We have multiplied the symbolic gestures. Except that we have forgotten that geopolitics prevails over memorial speeches, and that the Russians are not in the symbols, but in the concrete, with a military alliance. In terms of memory, France has done a lot. But the reality of our geopolitics is very far from what the Russians can offer.
The authoritarian FLN regime survived the Hirak protest movement. But can it survive a new generation?
It is a regime that will be unsinkable as long as it is based on oil and gas revenues. It went through the end of the Cold War, with oil counter-shocks that were dramatic for many Algerians. He survived the civil war and the first jihad in a Sunni country led by the GIA and the AIS [NDLR : l’armée du FIS]. It went through the period of the major attacks, which began on September 11, 2001. It held firm during the Arab Spring. And there, the regime has just won a victory by KO against Hirak. The power in place feels very strong, because it knows that it has strength with it, relying on the first army in Africa. For the moment, it is therefore unbreakable. In any case, this is what many Algerians have concluded, many of whom want to leave. Civil liberties are under surveillance and free associations and opposition press have lived. The regime targets what it calls external or internal enemies, both France and the Kabyles, Morocco and dissident Islamists… Whereas in reality these designated enemies are far from constituting a proven threat to date, and even less coordinated.
“To question the 1968 agreement is to question the interests of the nomenklatura”
There has indeed been a lot of talk about a generational change. But there has already been a change of half a generation within the regime, since no more leaders have fought in the Algerian war. Yet the regime holds.
What is the state of mind of Algerian society?
There was great hope at the time of the Hirak. But, today, resignation prevails. Algerians have no illusions about the regime. Many want to leave. And at the same time, what society demands is that its standard of living be maintained, that its ability to consume, to ensure its daily life, to have a home and a car with gasoline be ensured, which is by no means obvious. Algeria is based on a cash and import economy. Whenever there have been major political crises, like in 1988 or during the Hirak, it was because rent had collapsed and the state was unable to maintain the standard of living.
In a major maintenance granted to L’Express, Edouard Philippe denounced the 1968 bilateral agreement on the movement of Algerians in France. Is this the end of a taboo?
Edouard Philippe said what only people who are not in power in France can afford to say. This agreement is part of the taboos, because, among the things that the Algerian authorities must ensure to their elites, there is free movement. And this free movement is in particular the fact of coming to France to live there or to be treated, to spend holidays there, to escape Ramadan… It must be understood that this policy of “migratory privilege” mainly benefits the Algerian elites. Their children want to study in France, while the older people want to be treated there. To question this agreement is to question the interests of the “nomenklatura”, as the Algerians say. Let’s not forget that nearly 90% of Algerians cannot obtain a Schengen visa. This is why the regime is showing its teeth. For him, the 1968 agreement is crucial. Not being a popular or democratic regime, it is based on a contract of trust with an elite.
The French were not aware of this subject a few months ago. But the debates are released. The Algerian regime sees this as a bad way of Emmanuel Macron, because it thinks that, in France as in Algeria, it is the president who decides everything. But it is clear that in our country, the taboo on this agreement inherited from General de Gaulle is in the process of jumping.