During a television interview broadcast on Saturday October 5, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune accused France of “genocide» during colonization and ruled out the possibility of a visit to France, describing it as “humiliating».
A position which was the subject of a debate on the set of the show Facing Margot Haddadon LCI, on October 6, the day after the speech by the Algerian president whose remarks were accused of “consternants» by Lieutenant General Olivier de Bavinchove, who debated that day opposite Elsa Vidal, editor-in-chief of RFI, and Renaud Girard, senior reporter at Le Figaro. And for good reason, the rewriting of history in which the Algerian regime is engaged in order to serve other purposes escapes no one.
The Atlantic Sahara at the heart of Franco-Algerian tensions
Elsa Vidal is not mistaken either. Thus, she analyzes, “what Tebboune is doing is taking advantage of a diplomatic dispute – Algeria being very unhappy with France’s bias towards Morocco in the dispute over Western Sahara – to return to this issue and accuse us of genocide ( …) What agitates and what currently motivates the Algerian president is first of all to try to punish France for the bias in favor of Morocco».
Comments to which Olivier de Bavinchove adheres, specifying about Abdelmadjid Tebboune that “the configuration of his intervention corresponds very much to our change of posture vis-à-vis the Polisario Front and to a rapprochement with the Kingdom of Morocco».
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In this scenario, Margot Haddad then asks, “as the Algerians say on the subject of Western Sahara, Emmanuel Macron gave in to Rabat?“. A question which did not fail to provoke a reaction from the great reporter and geopolitist Renaud Girard, who first noted that “President Tebboune seems to completely ignore history, when he should have said that France created Algeria which was not a country while Morocco was a country».
Morocco amputated by France of its Eastern Sahara for the benefit of Algeria
And to remind those who do not know the history of this country, today called Algeria, that it was populated by “some barbarians who were going to attack the merchant ships“. A country that he describes under its current regime as “dictatorship”, including France “has no lessons to learn».
Moreover, specifies Renaud Girard, evoking the history of the Eastern Sahara which belonged to Morocco, before being amputated by France for the benefit of its creation, “General de Gaulle had offered part of the Sahara to the Moroccans. The Moroccans said no, we will discuss with our Algerian brothers who are fighting against you. The discussion was called the War of the Sands of 1963, when Algeria attacked Morocco».
And Renaud Girard highlights what is obvious to him: “so, if you look at a map, when you see what Algeria received in terms of desert from France and what Morocco has, it is quite normal, it seems to me, today that Morocco has the extension of its country into Western Sahara. We did everything to have referendums and it was not possible, but I think that France’s position towards Morocco is only fair, you just have to look at a map».
