Is Civil War Coming for France?
19th March 2025
Today marks the moment, 63 years ago, that France finally ceded control of Algeria. But speak to many in both countries and the war might have finished yesterday, with tensions between Paris and Algiers now higher than they’ve been for years. Consider, among other things, France’s recent decision to re-examine the “special” pact of 1968 that made it easier for Algerians to settle in France, with the Quai d’Orsay also presenting its former colony with a list of nationals it wants to send back home. Algiers reacted indignantly — but Algerian terrorists have attacked several French citizens over recent years, while many French Arabs continue to fiercely resent the land they call home.
And if what Frantz Fanon called the “red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives” of decolonisation are as vicious as ever in politics and the banlieue, France’s bookshelves aren’t being spared either. One of the most vivid examples of recent times is A Counter-History of French Colonisation, a fusillade in paperback. Written by Driss Ghali, a novelist and essayist, and published in English late last year, it promises to provide “an antidote to the poison distilled in bad faith” by “apostles” of postcolonial thought, those who’ve distilled the complexities of French colonialism into a game of heroes and villains.
In a vivid riposte to these activists, Ghali says he can offer a fresh and “dispassionate” view of this still-urgent moment of history, arguing that it’s time to move on from 19 March and everything it stands for. It’s a position increasingly echoed across France and Algeria, a shift with potentially revolutionary consequences for the politics of both countries. All the same, we shouldn’t necessarily expect Paris and Algiers to bury the hatchet just yet, especially given the incentives Arab elites have to perpetuate hate — and the underlying tensions that endure right across France itself.
Before everything blew up, Algeria was legally a part of ‘metropolitan’ France, as much as Provence or Brittany. Losing Algeria was about like the U.S. losing Alaska.