By Romain Caesar

In Algeria, as in all North African countries, there are North Africans, and there are Maghrebians. 

Those who consider themselves as Maghrebians do politics and those who identify themselves as North Africans do politics as well.

But after all, what is the difference between a Maghrebian and a North African? The Maghrebian defines himself to belong to the Arab-Islamic world, and the North African to the African-Mediterranean world. Thus, the first is defined as “Arab, Muslim and Anti-Western”. The second is rather defined as “Algerian, Amazigh, French-speaking, secular, atheist, Christian, Jewish, pagan, pro-Western… finally, an African-Mediterranean in its plurality.

The Maghrebian, who’s been in power in North Africa for more than half a century, imposes his dictatorship and hegemony on the North African in all spheres: linguistic, cultural, artistic, religious, economic, etc. He supports the dictatorship and considers as a traitor anyone who denies his national constants, which were dictated for him by the Big Brother Nasser and the Arab league, such us, his Arabic language, Islamic religion, anthem warmonger, his flag in colors of the noumenal realm and his Arab-Islamic land. To maintain his cultural hegemony in North Africa, he militarizes, arabizes, terrorizes  and islamizes.

He doesn’t leave any choice to the North African but solely exile, prison or death. The Maghreb movement, which is not officially known as Maghrebism, is embodied in the West, especially in the French and Canadian suburbs. It is well organized through associations, mosques and official and unofficial offices that are connected to the “Maghreb” states.

Its activists, indigenists, Islamists and nationalists–who prefer to live anywhere in the Western countries, but not in the dear nation they adore and cherish from afar)–were  mostly born  in some parts of the West, however, they claim to be Arab-Islamic, and they tag and label as “Harki” the North Africans who take full responsibilities  about  their background and affiliation,  and  show recognition and gratitude to their host countries, I mean  to Western countries, which welcomed and adopted them when they fled terror and death threat  of the Maghreb military-religious dictatorship.

Maghrebians, because of the support of Arab-Islamic states, have all rights in the Western countries: access to media, associations, Arabic and Islamic schools, numerous mosques… they even have the right to halal sections in markets and supermarkets. Although these same Maghrebians, who enjoy universal rights, have the same rights as Westerners in the West, refuse them to North Africans, at home in North Africa and sometimes even in the democratic nations.

Christians, Jews, pagans, atheists and non-Muslims have no right to anything. Is this double standard and one-way relationship reasonable? Thus, the reciprocity principle isn’t allowed and tolerated in this case, where Maghrebians feel at home everywhere on earth, but doesn’t tolerate, in return, anyone ” to feel at home”, I mean in the North African lands.

We are millions of North Africans, and we have almost no right to anything, neither in North Africa nor elsewhere. In the West, Orientalism obliges politicians to do everything to keep North Africa in the yoke of Arab-Islamism. A North African, who claims his Berber origins, his Greco-Latin and  Mediterranean heritage, his ancestral paganism, Christianity and his attachment to roman languages, especially the French language, as well as, his eagerness  for freedom, is considered, by the Maghrebian and some left  paternalistic French politicians, as a raghead, or even better, an Arab of service, even though he’s contesting out loud that “he is not Arab”. As A. Einstein stated decades ago: “It is easier for me to crack an atom than a prejudgment”. The latter has definitely a hard skin, to the point of sometimes asking the North African to be held accountable for facts and sayings of the Maghrebian. A Maghrebian firmly believes that North Africa belongs to him, he considers a traitor any North African who converts and adheres to a different religion than his own, who loves a language other than his own… In the imagination of French people, a Harki is an Algerian who chose France during the Algerian war. Nevertheless, it is important to remind them that this denominative is still relevant: it is still attributed today to any Frenchman of “Maghreb” origin who loves Camembert, Beaujolais, Rimbaud, Parisian nights, and other beautiful things. Don’t we continue to call a traitor, in some unofficial and official Maghrebi circles, Gérard Darmanin? 

After the independence of Algeria, the Phenic-Arab-Turkish coalition took power and chased from the African land its hereditary enemies, namely the Greek, the Italian, the Spanish, the Cypriot, the Corsican, the Christian, the Jew, the pagan, and renamed it “Islamic Land”. Consequently, it dispossessed the Berber of its culture and history, and today it wants, European Orientalism supporting – as so well described and documented by Edward Said, – the only legitimate culture of the land. 

Therefore, it is to  North African category that belongs Boualam Sansal, Kabylian youths and political opponents who languish in Algeria’s prisons,  exiled intellects and  linguists, humanists, apostates of Islam, francophones and all those who love their host countries, but also who want to get their countries of origin out of isolation, to reconcile it with humanity, open it to the world in order to welcome all those who love this land, all the languages and religions of the world, give the same rights to men and women who will live there without fear or discrimination.