In Algeria, return of former colonial settlers evokes bittersweet ties with France

[Al-khiyal]

ALGIERS, Algeria The sprightly Frenchwoman wandered around downtown Algiers, looking for the church where she first took communion as a young girl. It had become a mosque. Her old school was gone too.

Joelle Simon's recent trip to Algeria was an emotional, sometimes painful, journey into memories of the life torn from her more than 40 years ago, when France walked away from the north African country after a bitter eight-year war of independence.

The scars, both for many former colonial settlers and for ties between France and Algeria, have never fully healed. But enough time has passed, and Algerian streets have become safe enough, for Simon and thousands of one-time French settlers to revisit their origins and make their peace.

"Of course we are French," said Simon, 61. "But it's true that this is my country ... My parents, my school, my roots were here."

"If we talk with Algerians of our age, we have lived through the same things, we have the same memories," she said.

Algeria was an unusual colony. Over 132 years the French tried to turn their prize possession into a region of France like any other, with French values, French institutions, and a settler community that expanded to almost 1 million people. Generations of French, like Simon, were born here.

But as the Algerian independence movement gathered pace after 1954, French security services responded to Algerian attacks on the settler community with repression and torture.

The settlers wanted to stay, and felt betrayed when French President Charles de Gaulle recognized that France's empire in North Africa was over and decided to end the war in 1962.

Many supported a rebel group within the French army, the Secret Armed Organization, which launched a failed coup in Algiers to block independence.

Annick Moseley's grandfather committed suicide at 85 rather than move to France. Now 62, she was back to see his grave and visit her old apartment. She stopped to talk to Nadia, an Algerian woman living in the building.

Nadia, who didn't give her surname, said she had fond memories of her French schoolteachers and was happy to see former settlers return for a visit.

"I saw her cry and that tore at my heart," she said after comforting an emotional Moseley. "We are not enemies."

But after Moseley left the building, Nadia, 59, recalled the violent battle in the Casbah — the historic quarter of Algiers where she grew up — during the independence war.

Her brother, she said, "was beaten and tortured in front of us. In front of me, in front of my mother and father."

"We were considered inferior people," she said. "That was the problem."

Resentments linger. Last year, France stirred Algerian anger by passing a law referring to the "positive role of the French presence overseas, notably in North Africa." The clause was eventually deleted, but a planned friendship treaty was put off, with Algeria calling on France to make an official apology for colonial rule.

In April, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika accused France of carrying out a "genocide of Algeria's identity."

However, with the end of a 13-year Islamic insurgency that claimed up to 200,000 lives, settlers are returning as tourists and getting a generally friendly welcome. Several tour operators have sprung up to cater to them.

The visitors still find traces of the old times — blue French-style street signs, baguette bread and men playing petanques, French bowling, in town squares.

Ties of culture, family and trade prevail through the estimated 1.5 million Algerian immigrants and descendants who live in France, but Algerian journalist Faycal Metaoui doubts they'll last.

Algeria is opening up to the world, France has become less welcoming to immigrants, and "the young who dreamed of France until recently don't have that dream any more," he said. "It's a dream that's in the process of disappearing."

In Algeria, return of former colonial settlers evokes bittersweet ties with France

[Nectar77]

Algeria is opening up to the world, France has become less welcoming to immigrants, and "the young who dreamed of France until recently don't have that dream any more," he said. "It's a dream that's in the process of disappearing."

Am glad Algerians have finally realised they are no longer welcome in France (I don't think they ever were) and it's time to broaden the horizons, it's a large world out there!
AND there is only so much a coutry can take before they say "Barakat"

The situation in Algeria is getting better, so for people who's reason for leaving doesn't include studies, travel (tourists), or work, they should be happy to stay in their homeland....

[Al-khiyal]

An agreement has been concluded between the Retired Workers National Federation and its French counterpart the Workers General Confederation (CGT) in coordination with the Algerian National Office of Tourism to allow French retired to make sight-seeing visits. By virtue of this agreement the first group of French retired workers, made up of 25 members, arrived last Thursday in Algeria on a visit which is to last a week.

According to the agreement concluded between the Retired Workers National Federation and the French Workers General Confederation (CGT), thousands of French retired people are expected to be attracted whether those affiliated to CGT trade union, the French workers democratic confederation, or Man Power Trade Union thus, negotiations are underway so as to conclude a similar agreement.

It is noteworthy that French retired are rushing to the CGT agency in order to benefit from a visit to Algeria, reliable sources reported. This fact is likely to back up tourist activity and allow the French retired to take stock of the security situation improvement in Algeria.

Thousands of French retired expected to visit Algeria

[FORTUNATO]

They are welcome......

[Al-khiyal]

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Michele Planells waited 44 years to eat this beignet, a doughnut-like Algerian fritter.

On a sunny October morning, Planells dug into the treat as she and a dozen other French people took in the sights of Algiers, a city they fled in terror. This was their first trip back since 1962, when Algeria won its independence from France after a bitter eight-year struggle. They looked for family tombs, went to homes they abandoned and visited schools they attended.

"I'm French by citizenship, but I'm really from Algiers,'' said Planells, 60, an Air France ticket agent from Nice, who left the city carrying only her Paul Anka records as she got on an overcrowded boat with gunfire ringing in the streets.

Relations between France and Algeria remain strained. President Jacques Chirac has rebuffed Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's demand that France apologize for its "long, brutal and genocidal'' rule. During a visit to Algiers last week, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading ruling party candidate in the 2007 presidential vote, said he couldn't "ask children to apologize for the faults of their fathers.''

Thousands of "pied-noirs,'' or black feet, as European settlers were known because of their dark shoes, are putting aside their traumas to visit Algeria. The personal links they establish may help improve relations between France and Algeria, spurring cooperation on issues such as terrorism and immigration, said French Ambassador Hubert Colin de Verdiere.

About a million Europeans fled during the war of independence, which French historian Benjamin Stora estimates killed about 500,000 Algerians. Many pied-noirs were prevented from visiting Algeria in the 1990s by a civil war that pitted Islamists against the military-backed government.

'Looks the same'

"They didn't want to come when they were in the prime of their lives because the pain was too fresh,'' Colin de Verdiere said. "But now they are in the twilight of their lives. They want to die in peace.''

The visits were organized by Fondation France Maghreb, started by Pierre-Henri Pappalardo, who fled to France when he was 14. The Marseille-based association has taken 4,000 pied-noirs back to Algeria since September 2004. The number of visiting pied-noirs, a few dozen a year until 2003, will rise to about 6,000 this year, Colin de Verdiere said.

During last month's tour, the visitors gasped as they saw familiar sites - a pharmacy here, a dance school there, or a café where they used to buy ice cream.

"It's a bit run down with many more people, but otherwise looks the same,'' said Janine Fabre, a 64-year-old retired hospital worker.

'Deteriorated'

Anne-Marie Juan, 57, visited St. Eugene cemetery in the shadow of the Moresque Notre Dame d'Afrique, a Catholic cathedral, where 20,000 Christian and Jewish tombs are spread over land covered with cypress trees and wild fennel.

She found the tomb of her father, Francois Juan, who was gunned down by rebels in January 1962 when he was 51. The bank employee from Marseille also searched out the graves of her Algeria-born great-grandparents, placing silk flowers at each.

In town, her family's pastry shop had been replaced by a shoe store. Two old men outside remembered her grandfather.

"The country has deteriorated since you left,'' Ben M'Hamed, a retired bank employee, told her.

Sisters Michele and Christine Frizzi, both dentists in Lyon, visited their apartment in the old lower-middle class district of steep streets adjacent to the Casbah, the only part of town that predates the French arrival in 1830.

In tears

The sisters were invited in by Lora Chenafi, whose family has lived in the Frizzi's old apartment for the past 30 years. Initially suspicious and hesitant, Chenafi soon exchanged phone numbers with them.

The Frizzi sisters met up with the rest of the group for lunch at a fish restaurant on the port. Almost everyone was crying.

The million Europeans in Algeria never amounted to more than 15 percent of the population. Christians and Jews received French citizenship in 1871. Muslims didn't. They got the vote in 1944, although districts were designed to ensure they never outvoted the Europeans.

The war for independence began in 1954, and the French army largely crushed the rebels by 1958. Civilian massacres and the use of torture undercut support for the war in France, resulting in General Charles de Gaulle's decision to quit Algeria.

The army put down a last ditch effort by European settlers to keep control, and Algeria became independent on July 1, 1962.

History has colored the "love-hate relationship between France and Algeria,'' although increased contacts are changing the nature of the interaction, said John Entelis, director of the Middle East Studies Program at Fordham University in New York.

"French visitors to Algeria are always surprised at the warm welcome, and the Algerians are surprised at how warm the French are,'' Colin de Verdiere said. "That's what people feel at the personal level. It will eventually percolate up.''

For Planells, the visit brought closure.

"I wanted to see what it was like,'' she said. ``I wanted to relive my childhood. I never came with any regrets. I'm not coming back with any rancor.''

Beignets beckon exiles back to Algeria as France shuns apology