[Translated from Le Figaro (Paris)]

Debates and opinions

Analysis

MOROCCO AND ALGERIA DON'T SEE FRENCH COLONIZATION IN THE SAME WAY
By Thierry Oberlé

Le Figaro (Paris)
January 27, 2006

http://www.lefigaro.fr/debats/20060127.FIG0097.html?211757

The virulence of Algerian reactions to the text of the French law on the positive character of colonization has obscured the more nuanced approach of Moroccan intellectuals to that period of North African history. In November, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of Morocco, a colloquium organized in Rabat by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation of Germany began a polemics-free discussion on the balance sheet of North African colonization. Then in December the magazine Tel Quel dared to present a dossier entitled "Was the protectorate beneficial to Morocco?" Was it above all a source of humiliation, or essentially a modernizing factor? As a leading publication of the Moroccan press, Tel Quel has been in the habit of breaking national taboos. This time its aim was to let Moroccan historians and sages speak, since the French, "both judge and party in the case," could not "by themselves" claim to draw up an accurate description of the state of things.

"The building of dams, the postal service, and the railroad looks like an epic of the mission civilisatrice . . . though in the service of the metropolitan center's interests," notes at once Abdallah Saaf, an intellectual who several years ago served as minister of national education. Jamâa Baïda, an historian who has written notable works on Morocco's religions, emphasizes: "Who can be unaware of the installation of lasting infrastructures and above all the disarmament of the tribes? That certainly served 'armed pacification' to France's benefit but was also very important for the incipient Moroccan state." According to him, colonization made it possible to go from a tribal state to a nation-state, from a society of subjects to building a society of citizens. "Colonization projected us into the era of globalization. What I consider most significant is our capacity to adapt as a result of that period," says Baïda.

Those invited by Tel Quel ask about the image of the French that the country has retained. They evoke a selective memory apt to erase the darkness of a French ideology glorifying a supposed superiority of whites, favoring the seizure of lands, and limiting access to education to less than 10% of children. "Even my historian colleagues are nostalgic for Lyautey. [NOTE: Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934) was first military governor and then "Commissaire-Résident Général" of French Morocco (1907-1925). --M.J.] Today memory retains more what is positive," notes Jamâa Baïda. One of his colleagues cites a study conducted by a Catalan institute in which old Moroccans insist on the moral qualities of the colonists. "They are reacting with a view to present dysfunction by idealizing the past," according to his analysis. Abdallah Saaf recalls that "discrimination was practiced everywhere, at the level of salaries, of access to positions . . ." For Moroccan intellectuals, rereading the past contributes to getting a better grip on the present. And to admitting that the Moroccan administration, too, subjected the population to "massive injustices" after independence.

These remarks didn't cause much of a stir in a young nation that attained independence without too many difficulties only seven years before Algeria. Invited to express themselves, the heralds of the anticolonial struggled recalled once more how evil was a system that had "no justification." Thus ended the announcement. Without anyone getting carried away in the slightest .

Such disengagement from the thorny question of the French occupation is for the moment unthinkable in Algeria, where everyone is still on edge. The bloody ditch dug during eight years of war in part explains this difference. But it doesn't justify everything. In Morocco, too, colonial armies violently repressed nationalist impulses. In the 1920s the Spanish and the French used gases in combat and unleashed chemical weapons to defeat the Rif rebels led by Abd el-Krim. [NOTE: Abd el-Krim (c. 1882-1963) was a Berber leader in NE Morocco who founded a Republic of the Rif (1921-1926); in 1925, French forces under Gen. Pétain employed mustard gas. --M.J.] This extraordinarily violent episode is rarely mentioned on either side of the Mediterranean. Less constraining that the colonization pure and simple that Algeria endured for 132 years, the protectorate option, which guaranteed at least formal maintenance of local institutions, may also lead to less harsh judgments.

Still, in Algeria, the question of the war of liberation continues, more than forty-three years after the Evian Accords [NOTE: March 18, 1962, establishing a cease-fire that ended the war and led to Algeria's independence. --M.J.], to dominate entirely reflection on the colonial past. It leaves no real space for other debates that, when they manage to emerge, are condemned to being elaborated under the tutelary shadow of the revolution's martyrs. "It's a little as if you told families deriving from the French Resistance that the Nazi Occupation had some good aspects," is how an Algerian diplomat puts it.

But one often hears in the side streets of of the city center of Blida, the old city of roses, [NOTE: Less than 30 miles southwest of Alger. --M.J.] old men in suits stop passing a passing visitor to speak nostalgically of the "belle époque" when the French were there. In Alger, Algerian officials privately distinguish between the colonial system, which they condemn, and the colonists, about whom judgments are more nuanced. No one would think to deny that the colonists drained the Mitidja swamps and made of it Algeria's most fertile plain. A storehouse of fruits and vegetables that since their departure has been transformed into an undeveloped industrial zone.

But nothing of this comes through in the media. The elites in power are not used to being contradicted, and are still under the influence of a highly sensitive nationalism, in which official history is the only thought allowed. In a system that has scarcely changed since 1962, the past is used to perpetuate one group's grasp upon a territory. As for the noise of declarations above all reserved for electoral campaigns, that serves to cover up a more pressing question: is Algeria an opaque democracy or a transparent dictatorship?

--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Department of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Web page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@plu.edu