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Algeria-France: Retailleau Insists on “War,” Algiers Demands Paris Decontaminate All Nuclear Test Sites
The nuclear tests in Algeria’s Sahara, totaling 17 between 1960 and 1966, are among the five major disputes between Paris and Algiers. A dialogue began during French President Emmanuel Macron’s official visit to Algeria in August 2022. Significant progress was anticipated during President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s trip to Paris, but this visit might never occur under Macron’s presidency, overshadowed by events including France’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Following this, there were eruptions around the arrest of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal. The French president could not help but lecture on democracy and human rights, which Algerians took very badly. After this confrontation, an influencer was sent back to France for inciting violence. After this latest peak in tension, French Justice Minister and especially Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau have said and done much, too much. Retailleau wanted a pretext to justify escalation with Algiers, and he will get it.
On January 23, 2025, the Council of the Nation (Senate) approved a law on the management, control, and disposal of waste; an unprecedented request was added to the other points: France must “fully assume its historical, moral, and legal responsibilities in the elimination of this radioactive waste and acknowledge the enormous harm caused to our country and the populations of Adrar, Reggane, In Ekker, and other regions,” as reported by Nadjiba Djilali, the Minister of Environment and Quality of Life.
France is caught up with the liberties it took at the Reggane and In Ekker sites in the Algerian Sahara. Eleven of these tests, all underground, were conducted after the 1962 Evian Accords, which formalized Algeria’s independence. However, an article allowed the colonizer to use the Saharan sites until 1967…
“Let our position be clear and be conveyed as a message beyond our borders,” emphasized Salah Goudjil, President of the Council of the Nation, during the examination of this bill. Note that the document does not specify the ways and procedures to follow to obtain from France the decontamination operations for the former nuclear test sites.
“You’ve become a nuclear power and left us with diseases,” President Tebboune declared in a speech at the end of last December, pointing at France. “Come clean, we don’t care about your money. I will not let go of memory, I ask for nothing, neither euros nor dollars, but for the dignity of our ancestors and our citizens,” the Algerian head of state specified before both chambers of Parliament.
It should be recalled that in May 2021, he made the same request in an interview with the French newspaper “Le Point.” In October 2024, addressing the press in response to France’s clamor over revising the 1968 Agreement, Tebboune exclaimed, “If you want to discuss serious matters, come clean the sites where you conducted nuclear tests. People are still dying, others are affected. You’ve become a nuclear power, and we’ve been left with diseases. Come clean Oued Namous where you developed your chemical weapons, and to this day, our sheep and camels die after eating contaminated grass. That’s the real issue, not some false debate about the 1968 agreement.”
The B2-Namous site, where France conducted chemical weapons tests in southwestern Algeria, was kept under wraps for decades; the case only came into the public eye in 1997 following an investigation by “Le Nouvel Observateur.” In his 2017 book “Dans les arcanes du pouvoir”, former General Rachid Benyelles stated that “activities in this desert area ceased in 1986.”
There is talk of an agreement being reached between Presidents Abdelaziz Bouteflika and François Hollande at the end of 2012 to decontaminate this site, but no materials have substantiated this document. What is known is that in 2007, following President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Algiers, a Franco-Algerian working group was set up to scrutinize the nuclear sites, assess their toxicity, and diagnose for decontamination…
Two other joint working groups were later established to align perspectives on the contentious issues of archives and the disappeared of the Algerian War. However, since the last official meeting in 2016, no information has been disclosed about these three working groups until August 2020. In his report on the memory of the Algerian War submitted to Macron in January 2021, historian Benjamin Stora suggested “continuing joint work concerning the locations of nuclear tests in Algeria and their consequences as well as the laying of mines at the borders.”
“The secret clauses of the Evian Accords regarding the continuation of tests after independence explain the taboo surrounding this dossier for years, especially in Algeria. Questions about decontamination were only raised very late while the sites were freely accessible, where contaminated sheets and other materials were taken, and there were barracks nearby…” said a specialized journalist.
It would not be until 1996 that this hot topic would be officially addressed by former Minister of Veterans Saïd Abadou, starting from the “ground zero” of the impact of the first nuclear test in 1960, “Gerboise bleue.” It should be noted that the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has repeatedly invited France to take responsibility for cleaning up the toxic waste caused by its nuclear tests. “Most of the waste is out in the open, without any security, accessible to the population, creating a high level of health and environmental insecurity,” ICAN warned.
Algeria demands that France decontaminates its cites where nukes were tested in the 60s
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