✍️ BY: Dr. Hana Saada
Paris resorts to theatrical accusations and media manipulation to deflect from its collapse in Algerian relations
Algiers, Algeria | May 5th, 2025 — In a desperate move to salvage its diminishing influence in North Africa, France has once again turned to misinformation, deflection, and colonial-era arrogance to explain its recent diplomatic breakdown with Algeria. Rather than acknowledging the gravity of its actions—including blatant violations of international diplomatic conventions—French political circles and media platforms have launched a smear campaign centered around far-fetched espionage claims aimed at demonizing Algeria and blaming it for the current rift.
The latest offensive comes from the French weekly L’Express, which, in a sensationalist and unsubstantiated report titled “France-Algeria: Behind the Crisis, a Spy War,” accuses Algeria of conducting illegal operations on French soil. Without offering credible evidence, the magazine peddles the narrative that Algerian intelligence is targeting political dissidents under French protection. This narrative, unsurprisingly, aligns neatly with the agenda of France’s embattled Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, whose mishandling of bilateral relations is now seen as one of the root causes of the crisis.
Observers both in Algeria and France agree that the real story lies not in baseless spy fiction, but in a coordinated provocation masterminded by Retailleau himself—who orchestrated the scandalous arrest of an Algerian consular official in a Parisian street. This grotesque public spectacle violated every principle of diplomacy and directly contravened the Vienna Convention of 1963. The motive? Derail President Emmanuel Macron’s attempts at diplomatic rapprochement with Algeria and position himself as a hardline candidate in his party’s presidential race.
France’s diplomatic misadventure did not go unanswered. In an unprecedented and sovereign decision, Algeria expelled 12 French consular officials in response to the incident—marking the most serious rupture in Algerian-French relations in decades. France retaliated in kind, but not before recalling its ambassador, Stéphane Romatet, whose repeated summoning to the Algerian Foreign Ministry had already signaled how far trust had eroded.
Now, faced with a political and diplomatic catastrophe largely of its own making, France is doing what it does best: pointing fingers and publishing propaganda. Instead of taking responsibility for the belligerent behavior of its security apparatus and the politicization of diplomatic norms, it is spinning tales of espionage in the hope of salvaging face with the French public and its shrinking circle of African allies.
But this narrative is falling flat. The global South—and Algeria in particular—has grown weary of France’s paternalistic posturing and condescending media narratives. The so-called “spy war” is nothing more than a smokescreen to hide France’s failure to treat Algeria as a sovereign equal, not a neocolonial outpost.
As long as Paris refuses to come to terms with the new geopolitical reality—where African nations demand mutual respect, not lectures—its diplomacy will continue to stumble from one humiliation to the next. Algeria, on the other hand, has made its position clear: it will not tolerate aggression, interference, or diplomatic theatrics masquerading as statecraft.
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