Paris recalled its ambassador to Algeria and asked 12 Algerian diplomats to depart Paris as a diplomatic crisis deepened. Algeria expelled 12 French officials earlier this week after one of its consular officials was arrested for the kidnapping of a government critic who resides in Paris.
The office of President Emmanuel Macron described the action as “unjustified and incomprehensible.” But relations have been on a downhill trend for months. The crisis has been portrayed as unprecedented since Algeria gained independence from France in 1962.
There had been expectations of easing tensions following talks between France’s foreign minister and Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in Algiers earlier this month. The two nations have accused one another of the deterioration in relations, which Paris has termed as a “sudden deterioration in our bilateral relations.”.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot stated “Algerian authorities have opted for escalation”. But Algerian minister Sofiane Chaib blamed the latest “cooked up” row on French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, when relations were in a “phase of warming up”.
They turned sour last year when Macron declared France was acknowledging Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and supported a proposal for partial autonomy for the disputed region.
Algeria supports the pro-independence Polisario Front in Western Sahara and is regarded as its key ally.
French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal was subsequently arrested in November at Algiers airport and imprisoned last month for five years. Prosecutors accused him of having compromised national security for comments that challenged Algeria’s borders.
But Retailleau became more entangled in the spat when Algiers declined to take in some 60 Algerians his ministry had labeled as “dangerous” and wished to expel. A fatal February knife assault in the city of Mulhouse in the east would not have occurred, Retailleau said, “if Algeria had respected the law and its obligations”.
Macron also tried to clear the air with Algeria’s president at the end of last month in what they called a “long, frank and friendly exchange”. Barrot then accompanied that with a trip to Algiers, saying “France wants to turn the page on today’s tensions”.
But the high-profile approaches failed to put an end to the cycle of underlying issues.
The most recent escalation followed after an Algerian consular agent was detained together with two other individuals last Friday regarding the April 2024 kidnapping of an exiled Algerian influencer named Amir DZ. A prominent government critic with over one million social media followers, Amir DZ, was finally let out in a forest.
An outraged Algiers stated the arrest of the consular official was intended to “humiliate” Algeria and struck back by expelling 12 French officials it claimed were all under the authority of France’s interior ministry.
Sofiane Chaib, Algeria’s secretary of state, said in a statement on national TV Tuesday that Retailleau had “full responsibility for this new situation”. He denounced the logic behind the arrest of the consular official as “grotesque”.
Retailleau declared it was “unacceptable that France is an arena for Algerian intelligence”.
Paris reacted late on Tuesday by expelling 12 Algerian officials, and summoning its ambassador Stéphane Romatet for consultations.
Barrot meantime indicated the ambassador would return to Paris within 48 hours, but stated his government would ultimately have to reopen talks with Algiers. “If we need outcomes for French people, at some point or other we’ll have to have an honest, level-headed and provocative dialogue,” he stated.
