Bernard Lugan: “France amputated Morocco to enlarge French Algeria”

On Mar 4, 2023

Bernard Lugan, historian and academic close to the French right, said in an interview with the magazine “Maroc hebdo” that “France has amputated parts of Morocco to extend the territory of French Algeria since 1870, that is to say 40 years after the beginning of the French colonisation in Algeria, which was subject to the Ottoman sultanate”, stressing that “these regions have never been Algerian, given that the state of Algeria only appeared in 1962″.

Lugan spoke of the ” strong Algerian denial of this evidence,” explaining that “Algerian leaders know deep down that they cannot defend their historical position, and they don’t want to admit that French colonisation was the one that carved out parts of Morocco and annexed the territory of Algeria, “stressing that “Algeria as a country did not exist before 1962, because it went directly from Turkish colonisation to French colonisation, so many areas, including Tindouf and Saoura are historically Moroccan without any doubt.

He said that ‘in March 1870, the French general de Wimpffen, commander of the state of Oran, seized Aïn Chaïr and the Oued Ghir region, areas that were undoubtedly Moroccan, because the vice-sultan in the Figuig region was a commander in charge of representing the central authority in the Touat oases’, pointing out that “the Moroccan archives contain documents that prove this”.

He added that ‘on 5 August 1890, by a secret agreement, France and Britain defined their zones of influence in Africa, and Paris considered that it could occupy the Moroccan regions of Touat, Gourara and Igli in the Saoura Valley, on the basis of a plan to link West Africa to the Mediterranean by trans-Saharan railways, and from December 1899 France took In Salah and a group of Tidikelt and Gourara oases including Timimoun, which was occupied in 1901.

Lugan reported that ‘in 1903, the French army wanted to annex the Figuig region, despite the fact that the Treaty of Lalla Maghnia signed in 1845 explicitly stated that it was part of Morocco, then they occupied the Bechar region, the Touat oases and other regions, and in June 1904 French troops took Ras el Ain, so these amputations of Morocco are well documented, both by Moroccan and French archives.

The director of the Moroccan Royal Records, Bahija Simou, announced that “the Eastern Sahara (southwestern Algeria today) is Moroccan territory, noting that she “has obtained documents on the Sahara from European countries” and said that “the historical documents preserved confirm the Moroccan Sahara, as well as the Moroccan Eastern Sahara”.

The debate on the westernisation of the “Eastern Sahara”, which France carved out in favour of Algeria in 1962, came back to the forefront after Bahija Simou referred to it in her speech after being the guest of the Arab Maghreb News Agency forum. She stressed that these documents are “available, accessible, and include not only emails and sales, but also a number of maps, agreements and drawings of the borders” from past times to the present.