This week, in Algiers, the People’s National Assembly prepared to vote on a draft law that does far more than seek reparations for the colonial past; it effectively declares a juridical war on the Western historical narrative. The “Memory Law,” designed to criminalize French colonial rule from 1830 to 1962, is not merely a statute about history. It is the capstone of a strategic “Identity War” waged by the regime of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Army Chief of Staff Saïd Chengriha, a war that repurposes the language of decolonization to erect a “Juridical Iron Curtain” across North Africa. By codifying the West as a criminal entity, Algeria is burning its bridges with Europe to secure its integration into the authoritarian orbit of Russia and China.

Parliamentary Speaker Ibrahim Boughali did not mince words when he introduced the bill, describing it as a “supreme act of sovereignty” and a “defining moment in modern Algeria.” The legislation frames the entire 132-year French presence not as a period of occupation, but as a continuous “project of uprooting and annihilation” akin to a crime against humanity without a statute of limitations.This is a radical escalation from........

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