An Algerian Pen in Service of Colonial Agendas: From Divide-and-Rule to the War of Narratives

🔴 An Algerian Pen in Service of Colonial Agendas: From Divide-and-Rule to the War of Narratives

✍️ BY: Dr. Hana Saada

Algiers, Algeria | In colonial Algeria, Paris perfected a deceptively simple strategy: divide the nation along cultural and ethnic lines, weaken the collective identity, and rule with an iron grip. The so-called “Kabyle exception” was a textbook tactic—pitting Algerians against each other to fragment resistance.

Six decades after independence, the same ideological weapon returns, dressed not in the khaki of colonial officers, but in glossy magazine spreads and polished op-eds. The latest cover story of Le Point—ostensibly a cultural exploration of the Kabyle people—is, in reality, a calculated exercise in narrative warfare, serving France’s diplomatic leverage against a defiant Algeria. The headlines alone betray the agenda: “The Kabyles: A Standing People”, “A Troubled History”, “Kamel Daoud: My Amazigh Roots”, and the ever-loaded insinuation, “In France, a Diaspora Under Algeria’s Watch”. The subtext is clear—repackage Kabyles as a distinct political entity, portray Paris as the enlightened protector of diversity, and frame Algeria’s central authority as oppressive.

Kamel Daoud: From Cultural Figure to Colonial Mouthpiece

Kamel Daoud, once celebrated as a literary voice, now finds himself—wittingly or not—functioning as a rhetorical asset in France’s soft-power offensive. Like others before him, his symbolic capital is being weaponized to chip away at Algeria’s image as a unified nation-state. His visibility in French media is not accidental—it is cultivated. Paris gains a credible “native” voice for its narrative, while Daoud gains the spotlight.

Yet Daoud’s selective moral compass speaks volumes. If he now identifies more as French than Algerian—as he once implied in televised remarks—why does his pen not turn to the struggles of France’s own minorities? Why no grand essays on the Basques, Bretons, Corsicans, Alsatians, or the marginalized immigrant communities within his adopted republic? The answer is as strategic as it is cynical—France has no interest in amplifying those voices, and Daoud obliges by remaining silent.

The War of Narratives Is the New Battlefield

Today’s geopolitical conflicts are not only waged with armies, but with stories. And Le Point’s Kabyle dossier is not harmless journalism—it is a soft strike at Algeria’s internal cohesion, timed with surgical precision. Tensions over historical memory, visa disputes, and regional politics have already strained Algiers-Paris relations. Reviving the “Kabyle exception” at such a juncture is no mere editorial choice—it is a political pressure tactic.

Daoud, for all his literary acclaim, has become a participant—willing or otherwise—in this game. His role is not to celebrate Algeria’s cultural plurality, but to recast it as fault lines ripe for exploitation. It is a service to a French establishment that still dreams, in subtler forms, of its colonial reach. In the end, the “war of narratives” may prove more insidious than the war of rifles. And Kamel Daoud’s pen, once seen as a beacon of intellectual independence, now risks being remembered as a colonial relic in disguise.

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