Lugan, a historian on command, does not “read” the history of Algeria; he cuts it with a cookie cutter to make it compatible with an ideological vision. This is less the work of a historian than a polemical political chronicle, amplified by the context of Moroccan-Algerian rivalry.
The taste for simple truths
• No one denies the reality of the 1949 Berber crisis within the PPA-MTLD, nor the existence of internal tensions around identity.
• But Lugan simply lines up well-known episodes – the 1947 congress, divisions within the FLN, rivalries among leaders. All of this is real.
• Yet instead of making it a subject of reflection, he uses it to build a history reduced to a crude opposition: on one side the 'Berbers,' who supposedly carried out most of the war against France, and on the other the 'Arabo-Islamists,' accused of confiscating power and betraying their comrades.
• The absence of critical examination of sources turns what should be an inquiry into a succession of weak signals, exploited to reinforce a preconceived thesis.
A Manichean reading
• To present Abane Ramdane, Amirouche, Krim Belkacem or Aït Ahmed as the exclusive representatives of a 'Berber' camp is misleading.
• These figures, although Kabyle, defined themselves above all as Algerian nationalists.
• Their struggle was not reduced to an identity claim but to a shared cause: Algeria’s independence and sovereignty.
• The core of Lugan’s argument rests on a crude dichotomy: 'Berbers' as true actors of the armed struggle vs 'Arabo-Islamists' accused of identity confiscation.
Political instrumentalization
• This article also fits into a precise context: the persistent rivalry between Morocco and Algeria.
• Commissioned by Moroccan media, the text serves to highlight Algeria’s internal fractures.
• Reducing national history to an ethno-identity quarrel feeds into a war of narratives, subordinating historical scholarship to geopolitical strategies.
• Bernard Lugan, known for his so-called 'iconoclastic' positions, offers a seemingly scholarly version of a discourse that weakens Algeria.
What Lugan omits
• The diversity of militant trajectories, where Arabophones and Berberophones fought side by side against colonization.
• The role of colonial France, which sought to exploit identity divides to weaken the national movement.
• The complexity of Algerian nationalism itself, marked by ideological, social, and regional debates well beyond the linguistic issue alone.
What is left unsaid
• The decisive participation of Arabophone populations in the armed struggle.
• The French colonial strategy, which constantly sought to exploit identity divisions to weaken the national movement.
• The collective nature of the war, in which regional and linguistic affiliations were transcended by a shared cause.
History as a battlefield
• Lugan is not proposing a historical rereading, but a political accusation.
• His narrative seeks less to understand the past than to feed into a present conflict.
• The war of independence becomes raw material to pit Kabyles against Arabs, thereby undermining the idea of a united Algerian nation.
• But history does not belong to polemicists. It belongs to researchers, witnesses, and archives. It is made of nuances, contradictions, and debates.
For a history that enlightens, not divides
• Reducing Algeria to a quarrel between 'Berbers' and 'Arabs' is an insult to historical truth and to the memory of the war of independence.
• The history of this country cannot be reduced to its fractures, but to the strength of a collective struggle.
• Algeria is not a fragile construction; it is the fruit of a shared struggle, and its true identity lies in its assumed plurality.
• Rather than instrumentalize history, it is time to understand it. That is what is expected of an honest historian.
Conclusion
• Lugan does not write history, he puts it on trial.
• By reducing the FLN to a dominant 'Arabo-Islamist' apparatus and the Berbers to deceived victims, he adopts a Manichean reading disconnected from the richness of reality.
• Algerian history deserves better than this cookie-cutter account. It calls for contextualization, confrontation of sources, and attention to nuance.
• Thus, Algeria is far from the predictions of this 'historian on demand.' After all, he must toil to justify the subsidies and anti-Algerian roadmaps sponsored by the Makhzen’s press — in exchange for prepaid getaways to Marrakech’s Mamounia!
Kader Tahri
Chroniqueur engagé, observateur inquiet
« Il faut dire les choses comme elles sont, mais refuser qu’elles soient comme ça. »
https://kadertahri.blogspot.com/
