On July 5, Algeria celebrated the 60th anniversary of its independence after an eight-year battle in a 132-year-long war liberation against a brutal and cruel French colonial and colonising regime. The authorities marked the event with a military parade and a performance at the capital’s opera theatre retracing the country’s long history.

Algeria’s independence struggle began in 1830 when France dispatched its armies to subdue the country, then a province of the Ottoman empire. It took France 70 years to secure control at a cost of nearly five million lives. The hero of the Algerian struggle was Abdel Kader al-Muhieddine al-Hasani, a Sufi, commander and ruler who not only mounted successful campaigns against the French but also justly administered regions he held earning him the respect of his own people, influential Frenchmen and other outsiders. Although he ultimately lost the opening battle for Algeria he was honourably pensioned by France and lived in exile in Damascus where he protected the city’s Christian community during rioting in 1860. Today hundreds of Syrians and Palestinians claim Algerian heritage and some proudly bear the surname al-Jazairi, like my friend Anas, due to unions between soldiers who followed Abdel Kader into exile.

The successful 20th century battle in Algeria’s war of independence began in 1954 and ended with a ceasefire on March 19, 1962, while violence against the French/European colons, known as pieds noirs, continued until July 5. Some 900,000 pieds noirs emigrated France over the next few years. Left behind, the Algerian “harkis,” who joined the French military and collaborated with the colonial administration were captured, tortured and killed. Eventually 90,000 were permitted to enter France. The pieds noirs and harkis had expected France to remain forever as France had made Algeria, a majority Muslim Arab country, an overseas territory and extended direct rule over the Mediterranean coastal area.

The Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) launched its campaign early in morning of Nov. 1, 1954, by mounting 70 attacks against police, military and civilian pieds noirs, killing 10. France responded by dispatching security forces and three companies of paratroopers with the aim of crushing the rebellion. While initial skirmishes took place on the countryside, the FLN took the war to the cities between 1955-57. Both sides targeted, maimed, and tortured civilians and combatants, making this campaign particularly brutal and cruel. French public opinion soon turned against the war and in 1958 French leaders, faced with an army coup, dissolved the Fourth Republic, created in 1946 and called on General Charles de Gaulle to preside over the Fifth Republic. Following mass demonstrations in Paris and other cities in 1960, de Gaulle opened negotiations with the FLN. These concluded with the Evian accord in March 1962 which was ratified in separate referenda in France by 91 per cent and in Algeria by 99 per cent of voters.

De Gaulle had no choice. During the Cold War the Soviet Union championed independence movements across the globe, making it impossible for Western colonial powers to hang onto overseas possessions and deny their citizens freedom and self-determination. This was the era of North African and Sub-Saharan African independence.

Algeria’s unending liberation war attracted powerful supporters. Having won independence by ousting its pro-British king in 1952, Egypt, under President Gamal Abdel Nasser, provided diplomatic, political, financial and material support to the FLN. Indonesia, a strong backer of the Algerian struggle, organised the Asian-African Conference in Bandung in 1955 and invited the Algerians to attend. The leading Asian power, India also supported Algeria and in 1961 founded the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in Yugoslavia with the aim of fostering independence from both the colonial regimes and the Cold War camps.

This was an intoxicating period when one-by-one colonial regimes fell and newly independent countries emerged. Algeria attained widespread hero status following the release in 1966 of “The Battle of Algiers,” a powerful documentary-type film about the FLN’s campaign against colonial occupiers. Reviews gave it an unprecedented 99 per cent approval rating.

The anti-colonial wars produced an era of admired independence leaders, including Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and Leopold Senghor of Senegal. Unfortunately, most failed to govern effectively and their countries continue to struggle politically, economically, and socially and to maintain independence from former colonial powers and commercial interests.

Due to the ferocity of the liberation war, relations between Algeria and France have not healed over the past six decades. France has refused to apologise for the hundreds of thousands of Algerians killed during the war.  Although French President Emmanuel Macron has described colonisation as a “crime against humanity” and has admitted that France slew prominent independence figures, he also angered Algerians by arguing that Algeria was not a nation before the French conquest. He also accused Algeria’s “political-military system” of rewriting history and stirring “hatred towards France.”

The rise of the right-wing and its overt racism towards France’s 1.7 citizens of Algerian origin has added to existing tensions which have been exacerbated by overt official racism. Algerians ,who form the majority of Arabs living in France, have been accused by politicians, law enforcement officers, and citizens of being thieves, diseased, unreliable at work, and living on the dole. Such attitudes and accusations increase discrimination against all French citizens of Arab background.

Since 2010, aggressively secular French lawmakers have prohibited the wearing of face covering — niqabs, veils and other items — in public places. A law has recently been proposed which will ban Muslim women and girls from wearing “conspicuous religious symbols” and hijab while playing in sporting competitions, the latter on the grounds of safety. In March, France’s supreme court upheld a ban on hijab in courtrooms in the north of the country, a move that could set a precedent for all France. These rulings affect citizens of Moroccan, Malian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Egyptian origin as well as those of Algerian heritage. This legislation compounds resentment against France in Algeria itself and makes reconciliation over the Algerian liberation war of independence all the more difficult to achieve.

Photo: AFP