Entitled “Algeria is collapsing, will it drag France down with it? », this platform traces the repression that befell the neighboring country, a “repression elaborated and implemented by an army that never ceases to glorify the fights against France, ‘eternal enemy’, ended up getting the better of the hopes put in the Hirak for a democratization of the country”, writes the author.
Xavier Driencourt is a diplomat. Former director general of the administration of the Quai d’Orsay, head of the General Inspectorate of Foreign Affairs, he was French ambassador to Algiers twice, between 2008 and 2012, then between 2017 and 2020. He published a book recounting his experience: The Algerian Enigma. Chronicles of an Embassy in Algiers (Editions de l’Observatoire, 2022).
“The Algerian reality is not what we are told”
It has now been three years since Abdelmadjid Tebboune was elected President of the Republic in Algeria. “Three years and, in Algiers, the question of a second term is being asked. What is the assessment of this presidency, what lessons can be drawn from it for France? My friendship for Algeria, like my respect for the Algerian people, obliges me to recall a few facts about political reality, French illusions and the consequences of these,” stresses Xavier Driencourt.
“If I had to sum up the situation briefly and brutally, I would say that the”New Algeria“, according to the formula in vogue in Algiers, is collapsing before our eyes and dragging France down with it, no doubt more strongly and subtly than the Algerian drama had caused the fall of the Fourth Republic in 1958. »
The Algerian reality is indeed not the one we are being described: the corrupt regime of Bouteflika fell in 2019, and, after upheavals, as in any revolution, the Algeria resulting from the “blessed Hirak” would be, we are told -on, progress, stability and democracy.
“At the dawn of an Algerian presidential election,
2024 will inevitably see a new crisis”
The author evokes the Algerian press “resistant during the civil war, martyred by the Islamists, ironic, critical and sardonic under Bouteflika, often audacious in its judgment. Associations like Caritas, founded by the Catholic Church before 1962, are dissolved , others accused of receiving funds from abroad. Abroad, that is to say France” he specifies.
” We think we know Algeria because we colonized itbut Algeria knows us and possesses us much more” underlines the author who foresees that ” 2023 will be, after last year’s official trips, a time of euphoria, with, as a bonus, a state visit by the Algerian president; but let’s be under no illusions: on the eve of an Algerian presidential election, 2024 will inevitably see a new crisis, as anti-French discourse is the leaven of a successful electoral campaign. »