In an official statement, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune described Boualem Sansal as “imposter who (…) comes to say that half of Algeria belongs to another state», Morocco implies. However, Sansal has never made such a statement. His exact comments made on October 2, 2024 to a French media outlet were in fact the following: “When France colonized Algeria, the entire western part of Algeria was part of Morocco. Historical evidence considered in Algiers as high treason punishable by life imprisonment…
Yet again, by saying that “When France colonized Algeria, the entire western part of Algeria was part of Morocco», Boualem Sansal was only repeating what all historians know – with the natural exception of official Algerian historians, namely that before colonization, all that has become today the Algerian West, namely Touat , Tidikelt, Gourara, Tindouf, Béchar and Tabelbala, was Moroccan land immemorially ruled by caids appointed by the Sultan of Morocco.
However, it was always following the colonial partitions that these regions were torn from Morocco, with the result that, during independence, the latter was asked to ratify their loss… and to accept that they were offered to Algeria, a state born in 1962 from the will of General de Gaulle. But, for the sake of regional political settlement and Maghreb fraternity, Morocco renounced its legitimate territorial claims vis-à-vis Algeria, expecting support from the latter in its policy of return of the Moroccan Sahara, then a Spanish colony. . But Moroccan hopes were disappointed, because Algeria became the main support of the Polisario.
“The veil of false history having now been torn, it is the debate on the historical existence of the Algerian nation which will open.”
Today, the almost hysterical reactions of the Algerian authorities show that Boualem Sansal has dealt it a terrible blow by breaking the taboo on which the false history fabricated since 1962 rests, and to which the “System” which rules Algeria is clinging. A “System” which never ceases to behave like the skittish heir of French Algeria. Indeed, it was France which brought together the regions which would form Algeria and which gave it its borders. To the west, the latter were traced by the territorial amputation of Morocco (Touat, Tidikelt, Gourara, Tindouf, Béchar, Tabelbala, etc.), while to the south, they opened Algeria onto a Sahara which it had, and by definition, never owned.
Boualem Sansal’s “crime” is to have recalled these historical truths… But, the veil of false history having now been torn, it is the debate on the historical existence of the Algerian nation which will now open, so that it is no longer possible to hide that the country went directly from Turkish colonization to French colonization and that Algerian unity is a legacy of France. Until its name which was given to it in 1839 by General Schneider. The Ottoman period did not see an evolution towards an Algerian nation-state, because, unlike the Karamanli in Libya and the Husseinites in Tunisia, there was no emergence in the Regency of Algiers. a national or pre-national dynasty.
Fixed on a false history that has become dogma and written since 1962 in order to legitimize the power of the caste which ousted the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) at the time of independence, the “System” was touched in its vivid works by the Sansal affair. As through the latter, it is the thread of lies that begins to be pulled, the entire edifice therefore begins to crack.
