Macron had a great time in Algeria. In Oran, he discovered DJ Snake, Disco Maghreb and the famous Boualem, one of the promoters of raï singers. He flirted with the Algerian youth by making him the first actor in the new configuration of Algerian-French relations where memorials, culture, sport and cinema are privileged. That was for the com.
Serious matters have been discussed with the decision-makers, the real ones. Those who repressed hirak, who arrested more than 10,000 people, imprisoned more than 300 prisoners of conscience, criminalized any activity related to hirak or in opposition to the power and its policy. Moreover, on a question on the serious violations of human rights in Algeria, Macron dodged, stating that it is a problem of Algerian sovereignty and that he could not interfere and nevertheless that he trusted Tebboune. Indirectly, he was responding to associations that, on behalf of the diaspora, called him up with a petition. It is obvious that economic interests take precedence over human rights, which is in the nature of imperialisms that impose their power on the world.
Imperialist geopolitics
Macron spoke above all about gas, security in the Sahel and mutual appeasement in relations so necessary to the imperialist geopolitics of France. Although reducing the Algerian gas contribution to France to 9%, Macron knows that the war in Ukraine is a game changer and that Algeria is becoming a very coveted country for its gas and hydrocarbons in these times of crisis. Securing its back and putting Algeria back into an energy supply system that secures Europe is the target with the Algerian government. The issue of democracy will be discussed later. A “renewed partnership” is signed where, behind the elements of classical language, there is an increase in gas supplies for France in order to guarantee energy security for the winter in the face of the uncertainties of the war in Ukraine. There is no way for Macron to let Italy supplant France in this strategic trade.
It is obvious that France does not want to lose its geostrategic influence in the region. Aware that the old continent is losing power in the face of US imperialism, Chinese hegemonic tendencies and Russia’s imperialist awakening, Macron and his imperialist technocracy refocused on the old colonial empire by seeking effective interests and emergence of new elites, especially in youth. Islamism complicates things in the Sahel despite the French military interventionism whose failure is obvious. Macron’s meeting with the general decision-makers of the Algerian power is significant of his willingness to associate his last with a security management of the Sahel region to not only counter the Islamists and their supply of weapons, but above all to seek political solutions to stabilize the crisis in Mali and throughout the Sahel. Macron noted the usefulness of the agreements between Malians signed in Algiers following an Algerian reconciliation initiative and phagocytized by Islamist factions. France does not want to let go of the Sahel, a vast and strategic territory for the mineral wealth it contains, Areva knows something about it, which uses Niger’s uranium almost exclusively.
A give-and-take relationship
In this old colonial empire, Macron speaks of the future and thinks in generational terms, but French imperialist interests cannot be content with abstract imaginings. Total, Bouygues and Areva need concrete political geostrategy to amplify their surprofits in the African continent and in Algeria. Today, African despots seek to empower themselves and demand a share of the looting of mineral resources for them and their children. The liberal reforms of the IMF that market all their mineral and agricultural resources have impoverished their population at a level never seen before pushed to mass migration and at the same time enriched the African bourgeois political and social elites who aspire to control these resources for better “privatize”. Class relations come to the surface even more violently and this creates a political instability where putschist logic and social explosion combine.
Algeria does not escape this scenario despite the singularity of its history with France. Algerian generals, journalistic formula to designate in fact this militaro-bureaucratic bourgeoisie, embedded organically in the state apparatus and which exercises a monopoly of a rare violence on power, freedoms and economic and social life, participate in this France-Africa in their own way. It integrates the capitalist interests of France by offering high market shares to French companies, but demands a return both by the sufficiently identified forms of corruption and by an international legitimacy that it hopes to be strengthened by France because of the divorce of the Algerian power with its population. Tebboune seemed well satisfied with Macron’s satisfaction, whose elements of pro-Tebbun language did not seem devoid of ulterior motives.
Macron returns home with Tebboune’s assurance of a guaranteed supply for the winter (we are talking about a 50% increase). He secured the «interventionist» pledges of the Algerian power in the crisis of the Sahel and the tensions of France with Mali during his meeting with the Algerian generals (the opacity is total for the moment) and he hopes for a psychological breakthrough so indispensable to a «peaceful» relationship with Algeria. The memory section and a few more visas will suffice. Prisoners of conscience, Article 87bis, the continued trampling of freedoms, the planned extradition of undocumented persons to Algeria, etc., all this does not fall under the headings of Macron’s soft power. The generals could continue to repress and… enrich themselves under the umbrella of France.
Source : L’Anticapitaliste / Par Abder Raphi
