AFP

After a months-long crisis, French President Emmanuel Macron and Algerian Abdelmadjid Tebboune concluded on Saturday a "renewed, tangible and ambitious partnership" to revive bilateral relations, to be accompanied now by concrete measures. The two heads of state signed a joint declaration amid great media frenzy before Emmanuel Macron left Algeria for Paris. This constitutes a departure from the diplomatic dispute over memory and the Algerian war, and an expression of a declared desire to enhance cooperation in all fields. However, the stakes remain high against the backdrop of a heavy colonial legacy that remains unresolved and a growing insecurity in the region, and Algeria's continued close ally Russia and its growing influence in Africa. "The visit allowed things to be resolved. This allowed us to consolidate, if not reinvent, our ties," Karim Amalal, ministerial delegate in charge of the Mediterranean basin, told AFP. "We consider it a first step. We will see the next day what will happen and how things will start," a French diplomatic source told AFP, analyzing the situation. For his part, says Pierre Farmeran, professor of contemporary history at the Sorbonne, that "real progress" is expected above all in "strategic issues". - Banish Russia? - "The entire Maghreb region is on the verge of collapse due to the energy and food crisis," Farmeran told AFP, the insecurity in the Sahel region and the disputes between the Algerian and Moroccan authorities. In this atmosphere, "the small French-Algerian issues dating back to the colonial period are very important to people, but countries have already turned this page." On the other hand, Algeria wants to announce its return to the international arena after a long rule of a sick and absent president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1999-2019), who died in the fall of 2021, and the “Hirak” popular protest movement. For its part, France, which recently withdrew from Mali, is counting on Algeria to help stabilize the region. On Friday, Presidents Tebboune and Macron sat around one table with the chiefs of staff of the two countries' armies and intelligence, in a precedent since Algeria's independence from France in 1962. In the joint statement, they confirmed that they would repeat the matter whenever "necessary." Westerners are also seeking to remove Algeria from the bosom of its ally, Russia, its first supplier of weapons and has become a major player in the region. "Currently, France needs Algeria more than Algeria needs France, and it does not have much to offer," said Geoff Porter, an expert on North Africa affairs at the North African Risk Consulting Center. And Porter pointed out that "Russia, in return, gives Algeria almost everything it asks for." - 'Let's wait and see' - On another disturbing topic, which is the memory of colonialism and the Algerian war, a committee of Algerian and French historians will examine the archives of the two countries "without any taboo". The two heads of state paved the way for the relaxation of the visa regime granted to Algerians, in exchange for increased cooperation from Algeria in combating illegal immigration. France's former ambassador to Algeria, Xavier Driancourt, sounded more cautious. "Let's wait and see if the Algerians will respond seriously to the French proposals and whether they will give the signals that Paris expects," he said, recalling that nothing had been verified by the announcements after Macron's visit to Algeria in 2017. Pierre Farmeran added that "the real issue is the opening of the Algerian archives and the freedom of Algerian historians to work." The Committee of Historians will have to open the file of the "brutality" of French colonialism, but also files of sensitive issues for Algeria such as the issue of Europeans who went missing at the end of the War of Independence. But the Algerian historian, Mohamed Arezki Farrad, believes that “saying that the Algerians do not want to open the archives so as not to discover things that do not please them is unfounded.” "One of the mistakes that France makes when talking about crimes of colonialism is that it equates its army with the National Liberation Front (which led the war of independence between 1954 and 1962), and this is unreasonable," he told AFP