PARIS – France will establish a “Memories and Truth” commission to review the country’s colonial history in Algeria, following an important recommendation in a new and much-awaited report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron and released on Wednesday.
The report also presented a number of other proposals to deal with long-standing complaints. But it ruled out issuing an official apology for the past, and proposals avoided the issue of systemic torture by French forces, which Mr. Macron has already recognized.
The report said that its aim was to achieve a “reconciliation of memories between France and Algeria”, two countries divided not only by the Mediterranean Sea, but also by deep animosity stemming from years of colonization and a war of independence that left hundreds of thousands of dead.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Macron’s office said he would create a Memories and Truth Commission, as recommended. In addition, he said, three ceremonies to be organized by the French government in 2021 and 2022 will honor the Algerians who fought on opposite sides of the war and the agreement that led to Algeria’s independence in 1962.
The report is by French historian Benjamin Stora, who will now head the commission. He said the report focuses on a series of concrete actions to “lift the lid” on a series of issues left behind by France’s colonial past and the Algerian War.
“If you open all these covers, one after the other, you get a real overview of the history of colonization,” he said.
Mr. Macron, in a letter to Mr. Stora in July, called for “real work, responsibility and clarity” on “the wounds of our past”.
In the letter, the president stated that “the issue of colonization and the Algerian War has long prevented the construction of a common destination in the Mediterranean for our two countries”.
In ordering the report, Macron ventured into sensitive territory where the last six French presidents were reluctant to go.
The French colonial past in Algeria is a trauma that continues to shape modern France, with nostalgia on the right and resentment among the large Muslim population in the European country. The millions of French residents who, to varying degrees, have ties to Algeria have competing memories of colonial history and war, making an official enlightenment politically risky.
Reconciling with the shadows of his past proved to be a long and arduous task for France, as well as for many nations. It took France half a century to publicly recognize its responsibility for the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during the German occupation in World War II.
The truth of the Algerian War was also buried for decades. Sixty years after the end of the 1954-62 war and the closing of the curtain of 132 years of French colonization in Algeria, the question of France’s colonial past has generated debates about the integration of French Muslims, many of whom are descendants of Algerians.
Perhaps no French president has gone further than Macron in facing France’s colonial past in Algeria, which he called a “crime against humanity” in 2017. Macron in September 2018 officially recognized for the first time the widespread use of torture by French forces, but neither he nor the previous presidents apologized for France’s colonial past in the African country.
“We are a country with a colonial past and trauma that has yet to be resolved, with facts that support our collective psyche,” said Macron in a speech in October. “The Algerian War is part of that.”
Historian Stora suggested a series of about 30 measures, including converting internment camps for Algerians in France to memorial sites and revising the curriculum of French schools to improve the teaching of French history in Algeria. A dozen recommendations emphasize the need to increase collaboration between the two countries in historical studies.
But the report also advises against officially apologizing for the past, arguing that concrete actions are more effective in promoting reconciliation. Macron’s office on Wednesday said there would be “no regrets or excuses” for France’s occupation of Algeria.
Almost none of the proposals relate to the systemic torture recognized by Mr. Macron.
Raphaëlle Branche, a historian specializing in the Algerian War, highlighted this recognition, adding that “I had never heard an Algerian officer defend the case” for greater recognition of the issue.
France did not officially denote the struggle that led to Algeria’s independence as a real war until 1999, and government initiatives to build a memory of the traumatic period have hardly gone beyond official discourse since then.
“The problem is that we waste a lot of time with Franco-Algerian history just recognizing what happened,” said Stora.
Sometimes Macron’s approach to the issue has met with resistance in France, including from his own prime minister, Jean Castex, who criticized those who “lament colonization”. Castex argued that such a sentiment could be used as a justification for radical Islam.
Macron’s call for the opening of all files dealing with people who disappeared during the war was also contradicted by a recent tightening of the French administration’s rules on documents considered confidential, including many relating to Algeria.
Stora, in her report, called for these restrictions to be lifted, saying access to the archives was essential to shedding light on the past.
The Algerian War fuels bitter feelings among France’s at least five million residents with ties to Algeria, including French inhabitants of colonial Algeria who were forced into exile, war veterans and immigrant families.
The ideological conflicts that marked the war – such as France’s universalist model in Algeria, which combined principles such as secularism with nationalism – were imported into French soil and still today lead to identity politics. The extreme right party National Rally was initially rooted in popular opposition in France to leave Algeria.
Feelings have been particularly acute among many young French people of Algerian descent who have denounced what they consider a perpetuation of racial hierarchies in France dating from the colonial era and a constant questioning of their identity.
“We inherit a story that is not resolved, that happened before us and from which we suffer the consequences,” said Faïza Guène, a French writer of Algerian origin who recently published “Discretion”, a novel about the silent transmission of colonial trauma in families of Algerian immigrants.
Mrs. Guène said that breaking that silence is what worries many people. “It is the fear of waking up a volcano,” she said.