Albert Camus (1913-1960), a
Nobel Laureate for literature, was born and raised in colonial Algeria. He is
largely considered in independent Algeria as the spokesperson of white settlers,
perhaps even the pride of a social class better known as Les pieds noirs.
The latter underlines the descendants of white settlers or colonists (French
but also other Europeans) who joined the colony after the conquest of Algeria
in 1830. Almost all of them acquired the most fertile land at a fraction of the
cost following the decimation of Arab tribes and the ruinous policies that led
to the dispossession of the remaining inhabitants from their communal lands. In
the literature about the period, the first colonists are branded as pioneers.
They worked the land and rendered it extremely productive.
It was rumoured during the
1930s that if America was proud of California, then France was proud of
Orléansville, today’s the governorate of Chelf and the region around, spreading
from Oran in the West to Médéa in the East. True, these colonists were
industrious, but they too exploited the dispossessed native population. Russian
convicts, who lived through the reign of the last Tsar and were serving prison
terms around the 1910s in Bône (today’s Annaba), were shocked to find that the
colonists treated Algerians worse than sheep.
With the end of military rule in the 1880s, colonists (not Metropolitan France)
were responsible—through exclusionary practices—for literally sending Algerians
behind the sun. Understandably, by the time the Algerian revolution broke out
in November 1954, everything the colonists fought and stood for became at stake.
Most of them, at that point, had been four generations in the colony.
To give non-Algerian and
non-French readers a foretaste of la déchirure or the disheartening
misfortune of these colonists brought about by Algeria’s independence in 1962,
consider this analogy. In South Africa, Nelson Mandella was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Peace simply because he did not repeat the Algerian tragedy. Mandella
kept intact the economic privileges white colonists enjoyed during the apartheid.
He did not start a policy or propagate a process leading to their eventual
eviction or dispossession. White liberals and their media adore Mandella for
not doing what the FLN is thought to have done with white colonists three
decades earlier.
Here enters Camus’s conciliatory
discourse during Algeria’s war of independence. He is notoriously famous/infamous
for adopting his mother’s point of view at the expense of justice. Because
I hailed from the very people sent behind the sun by Camus’ ancestors, I find any
engagement with that ‘justice versus mother’ discussion’ a dead horse. How so?
The terrorism Camus refers to in the quote was not terrorism; these were some
people’s deliberate actions of emancipation to re-enter history after more than
a century of denial. Hence, the euphoric reactions captured through Algerian songs
and other cultural artefacts such as: “يا محمد مبروك عليك الجزائر رجعت ليك”
While a student during the
1990s at Algiers University, I grew up having a part in several discussions
regarding whether or not Camus was a misunderstood universalist or bloody
racist. I can say now that lyricism does not even begin to approach, let alone solve
historical necessities. Reading Camus may make one more sensible and more sensitive
to certain complexities, but at the end of the day, poetic formulations of his
and his like (Mouloud Feraoun, for one) do not advance the cause of
emancipation a single centimetre. Lyrics and poeticism are what the French
brilliantly capture through the expression: des masturbations a l’infini.
That explains why there exist
perhaps a few solid reasons why the world will want to read one more book about
Camus. Advancing this position, I am aware, comes at the risk of effecting a
major offence to liberal sensibilities since Camus has been the darling of this
class. It is worth knowing that Camus did not hail from these classes, but he
had been accultured—appropriated, if you will, not without his tacit approval,
though, and as such, he becomes an idol for anyone who wants to change their
social skin. With class as a matrix for meaningful analysis, the methodological
line is drawn for what comes below.
Similarly, it is worth
recalling that with the conclusion of the Evian Agreements (Accords d'Évian),
colonists became personas non grata, undesired in a country they called theirs.
Many of them knew no other country to call theirs except Algeria. Most
Algerians perfectly understand and even sympathise with their misfortune.
Strangely, the Evian Agreements guaranteed the colonists’ right to stay. But it
is they who sealed their fate in calling for and acting to keep Algeria French.
Long story short, had they stayed, I and my kind (practically sons of peasants
with living standards barely different from feudal times) would never have had the
chance to make it beyond primary school. Like our forefathers, we would have
been condemned to remain subservient to colonists, the lowest class on the
social ladder. My father was coerced to leave school at the age of 10, and that
is what France was able to offer him and his generation.
Meanwhile, it is no
exaggeration that by literally enslaving Algerians, not a small number of colonists
used to live like royalty. Hence the nostalgia and the rumination over a French
Algeria in contemporary France has been more of a re-memory than a memory,
properly speaking. Knowing that originally these colonists hailed from peasant
and working-class backgrounds, it is understandable what they have gained and
lost. Camus is an icon for everything they aspire to, the self-made
entrepreneurial model.
Now, concerning how
independent Algeria has fared without colonists, that is less significant to
colonists and more appealing to capitalists. Volumes can be written about dysfunctionalities,
imagined or real corruption, and money laundering. But for the sake of fairness,
every Algerian is entitled to free education, health insurance, dignified
lodgings, etc...… Only those blinded with unsurmountable hatred can deny these
relative material gains. Still, the class struggle remains the perfect arbitration
for any measure of success or failure.
The predominant nationalist
discourse prevailing after independence only seeks to asphyxiate the class war.
Through several slogans, Le hirak (peaceful uprising) of February 2019
articulated that class dimension. Still, the triumphant narrative tried and
succeeded in portraying it as only an exasperation with Bouteflika and his
cronies. Rather, le hirak expresses an incendiary insurrection against
the entire setup of postcolonial order, not just about the Bouteflika episode.
The muffled class war has its explanation, which is further elaborated below, but
the class dimension after independence remains there for all to see.
This leaves subaltern
Algerians with no hatred against France or at least they do not hate France, les
français de souche. In this connection, it is worth recalling that no
hatred or admiration exists outside space and time. Sales of French cars do not
compare with Asian ones; Algerians cannot resist French brands. So is the case
with French cheese, delicacies, language, etiquettes, and above all, the French
love for life! For most Algerians practically leading their daily lives (not when
some journalist pushed a microphone their way), what happened happened, and one
cannot sit around crying over spilt milk or reinvent the wheels of time. Algerians
trust in the Hegelian law of historical necessity (not they know Hegel),
through which he means: that what happened could NOT happen. Still, for
historical accuracy and fairness in judgment: the colonists kept Algerians outside
time. This is not some nationalist ruminating over colonial atrocities to cover
for his postcolonial shortcomings and even crimes!
Ever since the end of military
rule toward the end of the 1880s, the colonists and their offspring dominated
the colonial administration. They made everything in the book to block the scanty
metropolitan policies that aimed to provide, care for, and ‘civilise’ the native
(Algerian) populations regarding schooling and caring for the health of Les
indigènes. Who stood against the progressive policies of the French state?
None but the colonists. In 1962 these colonists got what they have historically
always deserved. Outlining this does not make Algerians blind to the fact that several
colonists served in FLN ranks and openly supported decolonisation. The violence
during the revolution settled scores; that violence, as Frantz Fanon
brilliantly puts it at the beginning of Les dames de la Terre (The
Wretched of the Earth), has purifying effects. No one, no matter how Zen or
humanist, could undo that violence and bloodshed.
To counteract the sweeping
lyricism in Camus’ prose, I always refer for the benefit of students (most of
whom are historically removed from the colonial context) to the first page in Kateb
Yacine’s Nedjma. Reading Nedjma’s first page, one will see how
Camus has been out of touch with reality. Camus’ lyricism perfectly fits a middle-class
sensibility full of: ‘either and or’, indecision, and mental fogginess. The
first page of Nedjma saves readers from that fogginess and makes them fully
register the class struggle. One will realise how acute Algerians’ living
conditions after 1945 were and how they were aware of the necessity of
bloodshed and violence, not that they liked it, but because they were squeezed
out of options. Kateb Yacine remains a master had he written only that first
page in his career. For there, one captures Algerians’ logos, the reflective
consciousness that looks at the abyss but is not afraid to tease it out and
distil the sensible course of action. Perhaps, it is not an exaggeration to
conclude that Camus does not even begin to compare with Yacine. If literature
is but another means of changing the world, not just an instantiation of the
bourgeois hunt for the beautiful, then it is Yacine who deserves recognition,
not Camus.
Now, after 1962 and as
outlined earlier, one does not need to be an apologist for the FLN and their
misrule. But it is unquestionable that materially speaking, Algerians fared
well under post-independence rule than during colonial times. Regarding present
Franco-Algerian relations, they too cannot be stripped out of context. Not all
the criticisms one reads in the French media are accurate or innocent or not
propaganda. It is not news that there exists corruption in reporting corruption
in Algeria. Many observers recall that the French media were the first people
who brought public attention to overpricing the 1200 km highway in 2006. Why?
French companies, like American, Japanese, and South Korean, made their bids.
But the project was contracted by three large and state-owned Chinese construction
companies and one Japanese. How so? Simply because Algerian bureaucrats did
their job. They handed the project to the lowest bidder. Like everywhere in the
world, the initial fund meant to cover the construction was not enough, and the
contracted companies asked for what was legally theirs. The highway is not
Germany’s Autobahn, but its cost is reasonable. And the delivered infrastructure
is not bad, as is often reported. Likewise, the French media became furious
when the authorities handed the contract for building the largest damn in the
Maghreb, that of Beni Haroun, in 2001 to the Chinese. The contract was
mouthwatering, and soon the usual media faultfinding started. Bouteflika’s
reign has been no short of objections, but it remains a duty to be fair.
Big contracts for building key
infrastructure such as the one outlined above are a handful of examples of why
tensions have always governed the relationship between independent Algeria and
France. The cultural explanation proposed by the Algerian establishment often
aims to confuse, justify, and never explain. The tension has deep roots in
material history and the meaning of primitive accumulation. The tendential fall
in the rate of profits [as specified by Karl Marx in volume three of Capital]
obliges French companies to compete against more vibrant American and other competitors
from around the world for parts of Algerian markets that dictate the tension.
The corruption in corruption-related discussion seeks to cover that public
officials and their cronies’ swindling of assets, large or small, cannot
significantly account for the contradictions in international trade. And that
these contradictions in international trade cannot be resolved through globalisation
(Global Market) since the latter precipitates an equal standard when contracting
from among national capitals—a situation that remains full of odds and engenders
tensions among competing capitalisms making international trade. To provide a
taste of this contradiction, Algeria’s decision to nationalise its energy
sector in February 1971 gave leverage to American companies at the expense of
French ones.
That explains that if one
aims to address the subterranean forces that shape Franco-Algerian relations,
then one has to read and consider the underlying thesis proposed by Gregory D. Cleva in JFK
Algeria Speech (2022). It is not as if we only want to read the book, but
we have to. The gist of it is how in the wake of that speech, a pattern was set
for the relationship not only between the U.S. and Algeria or the U.S. and
France but between Algerian and French establishments. (the two peoples here
are outside the power equation) Leaving the ephemeral (that which French media deems
newsworthy) and embracing the essential, the JFK Algeria Speech is the
way to go. The intricate web of connections is barely highlighted, let alone
sufficiently addressed neither by staunch Algerian nationalists nor by largely
nostalgic French journalists and academics.
For a large sway of ordinary
Algerians, the FLN eventually won because it forced de Gaulle to accept
negotiations. Under the carpet, however, is how the FLN, by the time JFK made
his speech, was militarily defeated. Remember, it was in the context soon after
the battle of Algiers and when FLN masterminds were chased down, nearly all of
them were decimated. French generals’ strategy to defeat the insurrection
started bearing fruits. And still, the FLN, in the final analysis, got what it
wanted! Strange. Some other forces were working against French policymakers of
the time and in favour of the FLN, not necessarily in favour of the Algerian
people or the revolutionaries. We read in Cleva’s account that American general
consuls in Algiers serving from 1942 to the late 1950s each and all of them played
key roles by accurately reporting the pitfalls of French colonial policies. As
a member of the Senate’s committee for foreign policy and thus a likely
candidate for the presidency, JFK formalised what the American establishment,
up to that point, had always wanted and discreetly planned.
The U.S. did not emerge from
WWII victorious just like that. The world still remembers how President Donald
Trump, in November 2018, reacted to French President Emmanuel Macron’s allusion
to the need to create an independent European army, a framework outside NATO.
Trump angrily retorts: “Without the U.S. help in two world wars, today’s
Parisians would be speaking German.” It
is no secret that between the two world wars, the French establishment was
quickly ageing and bitterly divided. To further explore this topic, here is a 2006
study: Le choix de la défaite: Les élites françaises dans les années 1930
by an imminent scholar, Annie Lacroix-Riz. The point here is that while the French
generals and army overwhelmingly succeeded in suppressing the insurrection in
Algeria, French politicians could not capitalise on that success because
Washington wanted otherwise. The latter embarked on a decolonisation policy,
and not even Britain was immune. India, the jewel of the empire, won its
independence! So, who could openly say no to Washington? Who could dare? Not
even de Gaulle.
With his return to power in
1958, le generale tried his best to secure Algeria as French, but eventually,
he knew his manoeuvres would amount to a little showmanship. In mounting a
rebellion, the FLN’s gamble, for that is what it was, somehow ironically paid
off. U.S. geostrategic interests wanted an end to colonisation, lest upheavals
and insurrections in the colonies would break the capitalists’ new orders.
Decolonisation as a policy was meant to contain the colonised, regardless of how
on the surface, it gave them better terms (not the best) to negotiate their
fate and future emancipations. For Indians, as much as for Algerians or
Kenyans, the colonised’s national independence, besides the pains and
sacrifices, has been largely decided elsewhere, although it is disrespectful to
presume that battlefields did not matter.
This gives us an accurate
picture of how the French establishment views Algeria today. Perhaps less so than
how Britain views India, France sees Algeria as a bitch that got tired of
sleeping with Paris and decided in a fit of anger to go to bed with Washington.
All other approximations to those relations are meant to confuse, perhaps
justify, never to explain what the French establishment to this day cannot
overcome what it considers as the impossible loss! Now for Algerians, both the
establishment and ordinary people, severance of ties with France spelt good
riddance with an abusive and unjust colonial system. But it is precisely here
where Algerians prefer to overlook the American role and attribute victory
exclusively to their forefathers’ sacrifices. Worse than a taboo, the refusal
to acknowledge the American role spells the bewilderment of Algerian elites
since they are not even aware this pivotal role exists. Perhaps apart from a
handful of core FLN negotiators all perished by now, a few—if any—realise the U.S.
part in Algeria’s independence.
