The descendants of Algerian Muslims who fought for France during the eight-year war of independence are 60 years later struggling to overcome the “shame” of their families’ past.
The National Liberation Front (FLN) had launched an armed struggle in the North African country in 1954, aiming to end more than a century of French colonial rule.
French historians say that 500,000 civilians and combatants died — 400,000 of them Algerian — while the Algerian authorities said that 1.5 million were killed.
Photo: AFP
Colonial authorities, seeking to boost troop numbers and weaken the FLN, used a mixture of blackmail, violence and financial incentives to persuade what some estimate were 300,000 Algerian Muslims to fight on their side.
After Algeria won independence in 1962, some of the fighters known as Harkis moved to France, where they were initially housed in grim camps and have since faced decades of racism.
Others stayed in Algeria, where they are widely seen as traitors.
In both cases, many have left their children in the dark about their role in the war.
Harki fathers have often banned their families from talking about the subject “as a form of protection against the shame associated with what they did,” Algerian clinical psychologist Latefa Belarouci said.
“Children see the shame of the fathers as a debt,” she said.
The quest to reconcile with the past has often been further complicated by the two countries’ tumultuous relations since Algerian independence.
Expert Pierre Daum said France and Algeria have long promoted narratives on the Harkis that are “full of errors.”
“The first big mistake is to think that these men joined the French army by ideological choice,” he said.
Most had relatives who were starving in French-run “concentration camps,” while others, trapped between the FLN and France, had little choice but to join the colonial power, he said.
Daum is just one researcher who is challenging the narrative that after the war, most Harkis moved to France or were massacred in Algeria.
Historian Gilles Manceron said that it is unclear how many were killed, but that only a small fraction of the Algerian men who fought for France moved there when the war ended.
Those who stayed in Algeria often faced “discrimination or total exclusion,” he said.
While many were tortured and some executed for atrocities and alleged crimes during the war, “the vast majority stayed in their villages without being killed,” he said.
“The Algerian national discourse still treats [Harkis] as traitors to the nation,” anthropologist Giulia Fabbiano said.
However, Harki experiences, in France and Algeria, were far from uniform, she added.
“Growing up in a Harki family today or in the 1970s in a camp or on the margins of French society” is not the same, she said.
Despite the stigma, “some families in France have kept ties, sometimes very close, with their relatives in Algeria,” she said.
While leaders since former French president Jacques Chirac have recognized the contribution of the Harkis, psychologist Belarouci said that more needs to be done.
Recognition “won’t do much to restore their self-confidence, to rebuild their psyche and overcome shame and hatred,” she said. “Only working on the collective memory can do that.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to