Alain Juillet: “Algeria didn’t exist, it was us, the French, who created it!”
In an interview with the Frontières media outlet, Alain Juillet, former director of the External Intelligence Service at DGSE, stated that Algeria did not exist as a state before French colonization. According to him, this territory was part of the Ottoman Empire and was treated as a distant, neglected province. Juillet argues that Algeria did not have a stable state structure before France’s intervention, which introduced a form of organization and modernization. Although he acknowledges the importance of this process, he believes it led to the creation of a fragile state, born from an amalgamation of tribes and heterogeneous territories, resulting in an independence war.
Juillet goes further by emphasizing that this independence war, although essential for the creation of modern Algeria, is now used as the sole glue for Algerian national identity. An official discourse that, according to him, accuses France, holding it responsible for all the ills of Algerian society. Juillet condemns the fact that, more than six decades after independence, Algeria seems incapable of overcoming this legacy and building a fully sovereign nation, preferring to take refuge in victim narratives that still tie its future to its colonial past.
The debate intensifies when Juillet discusses Algerian immigration to France. He asserts that agreements between the two countries facilitated massive immigration, which, instead of integrating into French society, tended to isolate itself. Rather than seizing the opportunities offered by a developed country, this population would, according to Juillet, have cultivated identity claims, often hostile to France, and refused to assimilate to French values. For him, this failure of integration is largely due to an excessive and naive reception policy by French authorities. He criticizes the lax management of this situation, noting that certain neighborhoods in France have turned into real enclaves where the law of the Republic seems to be optional.
According to Juillet, a simple solution could have been implemented: conditioning the granting of French nationality on a real commitment to the state, as countries that require military or civil service do. However, France preferred to offer nationality in a nearly demagogic way, according to Juillet, to gain political advantages, turning the French passport into an electoral tool rather than seeing it as a symbol of belonging to a nation. This, he claims, has led to a multiplication of community demands and heightened social tensions, exposing a blatant failure of integration.
Finally, Juillet criticizes the weakness of French authorities in the face of certain Algerian influencers in France, who, without fear of repression, call for violence and confrontation. According to him, France, paralyzed by a misguided repentance and a timid justice system, only feeds this problem, which, sooner or later, could explode in the face of French society. This complacency, according to Juillet, is a real weakness that exposes France to a growing danger by refusing to confront the reality of the tensions with Algeria and its diaspora.