Long legacy of colonial period weighs on French-Algerian relations

Ronald Desbordes and a colleague during a mission in the Sahara desert © CRIIRAD

As Ronald Desbordes walks through the Algerian Sahara desert, copper wires, dead vehicles, and a 100-meter-wide blackened circle of melted sand are some of the still visible signs of the French nuclear tests of the 1960s, a colonial legacy that continues to inflame diplomatic relations between France and Algeria.

Relations between the two countries have recently grown strained due to a series of diplomatic disputes and a 4.3% drop in trade in 2024 to EUR 11.1 billion, primarily caused by reduced French imports from Algeria. But their relationship has always been complicated, with the Algerian population still carrying the traces of their colonial past.

“Today, the people in the South are still exposed to radioactivity,” says Roland Desbordes, 80, President of the Commission for Independent Research and Information about Radiation (CRIIRAD). “Radioactivity is the perfect crime. There are very few immediate deaths, except for those under the bomb. It's death without a body.” 

“A poisoned legacy”

Between 1960 and 1966, France conducted 17 nuclear tests near the locations of Reggane (Adrar) and In Ekker (Tamanrasset). The radioactive fallout spread across Africa and the Mediterranean, causing lasting contamination and affecting between 27,000 and 60,000 Algerians, a figure that varies according to the French Ministry of Defense and Abdul Kahdim al-Aboudi, a late Algerian professor of nuclear physics at Oran University.

“These are crimes that have had irreparable effects on mankind and the environment. These are heinous and unforgivable crimes,” says Linda Keskas, 61, an Algerian woman from Sétif. “France said those were uninhabitable areas, when in fact they were wealthy commercial zones.”

“It's a poisoned legacy,” she continues. “You make a bomb in the middle of the Algerian Sahara, where, as a colonialist of a country for 132 years, you know very well the population. They knew very well that people used to live there. Why didn't they do the tests in France?”

Deformities, cancers and genetic abnormalities are common consequences of radioactivity exposure. “We went to Tamanrasset’s hospital, and the doctors told us they saw a number of patients with pathologies correlated with hereditary effects of nuclear testing,” says Desbordes. “They try to pass it on to the authorities but it's immediately blocked.” 

Sign near a nuclear site in the Sahara desert © CRIIRAD

Still much left unresolved

Desbordes also says that at the time locals were kept unaware of the nature of the tests and were instead employed as daily workers by the French at the nuclear sites, "kept in total ignorance of what had happened."

It is difficult for people who remember these events to accept this situation. For Linda, recognition seems key as she calls for “recognition of the genocide, recognition of colonization, recognition of everything they did to Algeria.”

In 2010, the French government passed a law to compensate victims of nuclear testing, yet only one of the 545 recipients was Algerian. Desbordes says, "To even say, I'm a victim of nuclear testing, is enormous. They want recognition, but given France's attitude towards Algeria and nuclear power, I don't see when that would happen."

The difference between not remembering and wanting to forget

However, today most Algerians are unaware of the French nuclear tests in the Sahara desert. 

“I worked in Algeria in the 70s, after independence,” says Desbordes. “I was a teacher there, and young people saw only the future ahead of them. The past didn't exist. That's why I'm sure that today, for the vast majority of Algerians, it didn't exist.”

“I never heard about this before,” says Sahima Hussein, 24, Algerian-Egyptian, in fact. “I'm shocked and I'm feeling betrayed by the Algerian government.”

“New generations of Algerians don’t have much awareness about what the French did to them. They aren't in touch with their roots,” she adds.

65 years after the first French nuclear test “Gerboise Bleue” (February 13, 1960), one wonders if and why we should still remember the events of Reggane and In Ekker. 

“It's unbearable to see that this memory is dying out,” says Desbordes. “We have to carry this memory with us, so that we don't forget. So that our children don't forget. Our mission as scientists, as citizens, is to perpetuate the memory.”