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Rabat – The Algerian ambassador to France is set to return to his posting in Paris almost four months after Algeria recalled him for consultations in the aftermath of Emmanuel Macron’s controversial remarks about French-Algerian history and relations.
A statement from the Algerian presidency said President Abdelmadjid Tebboune received an Algerian envoy to France, Mohamed Antar Daoud, on January 6. The diplomat will resume his functions in Paris starting January 6, the statement added.
It provided no further details regarding Algeria’s decision and came with no clear indication of whether the Algerian government had received apologetic remarks from Macron’s office before agreeing to allow Daoud to resume his duty in Paris.
Algeria recalled its ambassador to France in October 2021 for consultations following Macron’s controversial remarks during an interview with French news outlet Le Monde.
In the interview, Macron described the making of Algeria as a nation was a “phenomenon worth watching,” arguing that the North African country was a French creation.
“Was there an Algerian nation before French colonization? That is the question,” Macron said in the interview.
The remarks did not sit well with the Algerian regime, which quickly reacted by recalling its ambassador and closing airspace to French military planes.
On December 10 of last year, France’s Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Algeria to ease tensions with the North African country. But Macron’s office issued no official apology statement, which is what the Algerian government had demanded of France when it angrily recalled its Paris ambassador.
No reconciliation without apology
In November, President Tebboune suggested in an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel that Algeria would not restore relations with France unless the French government apologized for Macron’s “insults.”
No Algerian “would accept that I resumed contacts with those who hurled such insults,” he said in the interview.
Relations between Algeria and France have been tense for years due to the two nations’ conflicting views of the French colonization of Algeria.
Algeria witnessed one of the bloodiest decolonization struggles in Africa’s history. Over 1.5 million Algerians were killed during the country’s decade-long war (1952-1962) to gain independence from France.
As Algeria was under French colonization for 132 years, historians in both countries continue to passionately debate the estimations of the exact number of people who died in Algeria as a result of French colonialism.
Early last year, Macron attempted to make amends with Algeria by making public a comprehensive report on French colonialism’s dark legacy in Algeria. But the “memory and truth”-themed report did not achieve the “French-Algerian reconciliation” Macron might have had in mind.
In fact, many senior Algerian officials rejected the report as it did not contain the apologetic tone they had expected. Many in Algeria had hoped for the Macron-commissioned report to apologize for colonial France’s “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
For its part, the French government has maintained that the dark episodes of French-Algerian history are a matter of “shared memory” and “shared responsibility.”
In his controversial Le Monde interview for example, Macron notably suggested that half-truths and exaggerations about French colonization have become a crucial part of the Algerian establishment’s governing and legitimization-winning tool.
Algeria, Macron said, has for the past decades been ruled by a “political-military system” and an “official history” that is not based on truths but rather on a “discourse of hatred towards France.”
