Benjamin Stora talks again about the Memory Committee but with nothing new

The file of memory, which the French president Emmanuel Macron seems to want to settle, is in a state of stagnation, despite the efforts made by both sides. The fate of the work carried out by the mixed committee of Algerian and French historians is still unknown as the deadline approaches. The year assigned to it from the end.
In this context, the French historian specialized in the Algerian war of liberation, Benjamin Stora, was asked about the state of the work carried out by the Algerian-French mixed committee to calm the wars of memory. His response was clearly cold and without a specific answer, saying: “We are working together, together.” At this level, we are preparing a meeting that must take place soon,” he said briefly.
In November last year (2022), President Abdelmadjid Tebboune raised the curtain on the five historians who are members of the joint committee in its Algerian part, and they are Mohamed Lahcen Zghidi, Mohamed El-Gourso, Djamel Yahyaoui, Abdelaziz Filali and Idir Hashi, while the French side was late. Pt Macron announced its formation until January of this year and appointed historians Benjamin Stora, Tramor Kimnor, Jacques Frémaux, Florence Hodovic and Jean-Jacques Jordi to head his team.
Benjamin Stora quickly returned to the past to talk about the steps taken by the French president: “There were gestures by President Macron, such as an apology to the family of the freedom fighter Maurice Audin and the lawyer of the Liberation Revolution, Ali Boumendjel, when he received his children at the Elysee Palace to apologize to them.” “.
Benjamin Stora spoke about President Macron’s recognition of the French state’s responsibility for what happened to the fighters who supported the Algerian cause, and apologized to their families. There was also a speech at the Elysee Palace in memory of the lawyer Gisèle Halimi, who defended some imprisoned FLN fighters, such as the freedom fighter Djamila Boubacha.
In an interview with Radio France Internationale (RFI), the French historian also referred to the decisions taken by the French authorities to partially open the archives, in addition to other measures that he said he could not list, but on the other hand he spoke of “many open questions that must be resolved”. Such as the final solution to the archive issue and other matters that remain very difficult”.
From the outset, doubts about the success of this committee’s mission leaked out, and the French side was the first to express its dissatisfaction, as stated by the head of the French committee, Benjamin Stora, who implicitly threatened to withdraw due to the lack of work opportunities for French historians. “We cannot continue to work on a voluntary basis,” Stora told Radio France Internationale (RFI) last May, before admitting that the mixed committee had met only once since its creation, and that was at the Arab World Institute via “videoconference. .
It is known that the time given to this committee to complete its work does not exceed one year, and if the counting starts from last January, which is the date of the announcement of the composition of the committee by the French side, then the life of the committee has less than two months left, but if the counting starts from the date of the installation of the committee by the Algerian side (last November), which means that its life is at an end.
All these data indicate that there is a defect somewhere in the work of the committee, which is working on one of the most difficult open files in Algerian-French relations, the file of memory, which has often poisoned bilateral relations and continues to do so.